Christian Krötzl - Katariina Mustakallio - Infirmity in Antiquity and The Middle Ages - Social and Cultural Approaches To Health, Weakness and Care-Routledge (2015)

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:35 21 January 2017
Middle Ages
Infirmity in AntiQuity and the
This page has been left blank intentionally

Infirmity in Antiquity and the
Middle Ages
Social and Cultural Approaches to
Health, Weakness and Care
Edited by
Christian Krötzl
University of Tampere, Finland
Katariina Mustakallio
University of Tampere, Finland
Jenni Kuuliala
University of Bremen, Germany
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio, Jenni Kuuliala and the contributors 2015
Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio and Jenni Kuuliala have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Infirmity in antiquity and the middle ages : social and cultural approaches to health,
weakness and care / edited by Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio and Jenni Kuuliala.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-3834-8 (hardcover) 1. People with disabilities—History—To 1500. 2.
People with mental disabilities—History—To 1500. 3. Alternative medicine. 4. Civilization,
Classical.
5. Civilization, Medieval. 6. Europe—History. I. Krötzl, Christian, editor. II. Mustakallio, Katari-
ina, editor. III. Kuuliala, Jenni, editor.
HV1552.I54 2015
362.4—dc23
2015016395
ISBN: 9781472438348 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781315588469 (ebk)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

Notes on Contributors ix
Prefacexiii
Introduction: Infirmitas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1

Jenni Kuuliala, Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Krötzl
PART I Defining Infirmity and Disability
1 Age, Agency and Disability: Suetonius and the Emperors of the

First Century CE 15
Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence
2 Infirmitas or Not? Short-statured Persons in Ancient Greece 29

Véronique Dasen
3 Performing Dis/ability? Constructions of ‘Infirmity’ in Late

Medieval and Early Modern Life Writing 51
Bianca Frohne
4 Nobility, Community and Physical Impairment in Later

Medieval Canonization Processes 67
Jenni Kuuliala
5 Towards a Glossary of Depression and Psychological Distress in

Ancient Roman Culture 83
Donatella Puliga
PART II Societal and Cultural Infirmitas
6 The Crusader’s Stigmata: True Crusading and the Wounds of

Christ in the Crusade Ideology of the Thirteenth Century 103
Miikka Tamminen
vi Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
7 Illness, Self-inflicted Body Pain and Supernatural Stigmata:

Three Ways of Identification with the Suffering Body of Christ 119
Gábor Klaniczay
8 Imagery of Disease, Poison and Healing in the Late Fourteenth-

century Polemics against Waldensian Heresy 137
Reima Välimäki
9 Infirmitas Romana and its Cure – Livy’s History Therapy in the

Ab urbe condita153
Katariina Mustakallio and Elina Pyy
PART III Infirmity, Healing and Community
10 From Mithridatium to Potio Sancti Pauli: The Idea of a Medicine

from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 171
Svetlana Hautala
11 Alternative Medicine in Pre-Roman and Republican Italy:

Sacred Springs, Curative Baths and ‘Votive Religion’ 185
Alison Griffith
12 Bathing the Infirm: Water Basins in Roman Iconography and

Household Contexts 201
Ria Berg
13 Sexual Incapacity in Medieval Materia Medica223

Susanna Niiranen
14 Miracles and the Body Social: Infirmi in the Middle Dutch

Miracle Collection of Our Lady of Amersfoort 241
Jonas Van Mulder
15 Saints, Healing and Communities in the Later Middle Ages:

On Roles and Perceptions 255
Christian Krötzl
Bibliography265
Index313
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 Oinochoe, New York, MMA, Niobid Painter.

Author’s drawing 43
2.2 Stamnos (fragment), Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-
Universität I 707. Author’s drawing 43
2.3 Krater, auctioned in Zurich market. After Arete, Galerie für
Antike Kunst, Griechische Schale und Vasen, Liste 20, n.d., no. 37 44
2.4 Oinochoe, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1971.866.
Author’s drawing 44
2.5 Column krater, auctioned in London. After Sotheby’s
14.12.1995, no. 140 45
2.6a Cup, Athens, Agora Museum P 2574. Reproduced by
courtesy of The American School of Classical Studies at
Athens: Agora Excavations 46
2.6b Cup, Athens, Agora Museum P 2574. Detail: Author’s
drawing 46
2.7a Aryballos, Paris, Louvre CA 2183. After Edmond Pottier,
‘Une clinique grecque au Ve siècle (Vase attique de la
collection Peytel)’, Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation
Eugène Piot 13 (1906): pl. XIII 47
2.7b Aryballos, Paris, Louvre CA 2183. After Edmond Pottier,
‘Une clinique grecque au Ve siècle (Vase attique de la
collection Peytel)’, Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation
Eugène Piot 13 (1906): pl. XIII. Detail: Author’s drawing 48
2.8 Pelike, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 76.54. Author’s
drawing 48
2.9 Lekythos, Paris, Louvre TH 16. Author’s drawing 49
12.1 First bath and death scenes in the Torlonia sarcophagus,

Museo Torlonia, Rome, inv. 414. Photo: ICCD E36823,
reproduced by permission of the MiBACT 203
12.2 The first bath of Dionysus, wall painting from the Baths
of Titus, Rome. Drawing: Giovanni Mirri, in Giuseppe
Carletti et al., Vestigia delle Terme di Tito e loro interne
pitture (1776) 205
viii Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
12.3 Prothesis scene with basin, footstool and slippers under the
bed. Sarcophagus found in Rome, Museum of Louvre, Paris,
inv. Ma 318. Author’s drawing 207
12.4 The most common forms of Pompeian large bronze basins:
circular types S2000, S3000, S4000 (with snake handle) and,
below, the elliptical basin T. Author’s drawing after Tassinari,
Il vasellame bronzeo di Pompei, II, 205 (inv. 3641), 215

(inv. 7066), 226 (inv. 7261), 245 (inv. 18684) 214
Tables
1.1 Age divisions from Antiquity 27
12.1 Life-cycle sarcophagi with depictions of basins 219

12.2 Large basins found in the Insula of Menander 220
Notes on Contributors
Ria Berg is a classical archaeologist and philologist specializing in Pompeian

material culture and gender studies. She gained her PhD from the University
of Helsinki in 2010 with a dissertation on female toiletry objects in Pompeian
household contexts. She is Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University
of Helsinki, and currently Vice Director of the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae,
with a research project on functional groups and the organization of material
goods in Roman houses.
Véronique Dasen is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of

Fribourg (Switzerland). She works on the history of the body, ancient medicine,
childhood and gender studies. She has edited several books and curated
exhibitions on these topics. She is the author of Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and
Greece (1993, 2013); Jumeaux, jumelles dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine
(2005); La médecine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine, with Helen King (2008);
and Le sourire d’Omphale. Maternité et petite enfance dans l’Antiquité (2015).
Bianca Frohne obtained her PhD at the University of Bremen. She works as a
post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of History at the University of Bremen
and is a member of the research group ‘Homo debilis: Dis/ability in Pre-Modern
Societies’. She is currently editing a handbook on pre-modern dis/ability history.
Her post-doctoral research project concerns the experiences of pain in the early
Middle Ages.
Alison Griffith is Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in Christ-

church, New Zealand. She is the author of articles on the Roman cult of Mithras,
Roman religion and the topography of ancient Rome, as well as the application
of the cognitive science of religion to the study of Roman religion and cults.
Mary Harlow is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the School of Archaeology

and Ancient History at the University of Leicester. Her research interests range
from life course studies and the history of the Roman family to dress and fashion
in the Roman period. For recent publications please see http://www2.le.ac.uk/
departments/archaeology/people/harlow
Svetlana Hautala graduated in cultural anthropology and classical languages

from the University of Oulu (Finland) in 2003. In 2008 she defended her PhD
x Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
thesis on selling drugs in marketplaces in Antiquity titled ‘Pharmakopwlai:

The communication of the biological knowledge in the ancient world’ at the
University of Siena (Italy), where she became a fellow and a post-doctoral
researcher at the Center for Anthropology of the Ancient World.
Gábor Klaniczay is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Central European

University, Budapest. His interests are in the historical anthropology of medieval

and early modern Christianity (sainthood, miracle beliefs, visions, stigmatics,
magic, witchcraft), and the comparative history of ‘medievalism’. His books
include The Uses of Supernatural Power (1990); Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses
(2002); (ed.) Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques et religieux
(2004); (ed.) Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe (2013).
Christian Krötzl is Professor of Medieval History at the University of

Tampere, Finland. His research and his publications have focused on everyday
life, communication, parent-child relations, pilgrimages, miracles, missionary
politics and student networks. He has edited, with Katariina Mustakallio, On
Old Age. Approaching Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (2011), as well
as De Amicitia. Friendship and Social Networks in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages (2010).
Jenni Kuuliala obtained her PhD at the University of Tampere in 2013 with a
thesis on physically impaired children in later medieval canonization processes.
She is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of
Bremen, funded by the BREMEN TRAC – COFUND Fellowship programme
and is affiliated with the research group ‘Homo debilis. Dis/ability in der
Vormoderne’. In addition to disability history she has published on medieval
hagiography, childhood and folk beliefs.
Ray Laurence is Professor of Roman History and Archaeology at the University

of Kent (‘the UK’s European University’). His book Growing Up and Growing
Old in Ancient Rome (with Mary Harlow; 2002) placed age alongside gender, as
a key component of historical research. Subsequently, with Mary Harlow, he has
edited Age and Ageing in the Roman Empire (2007); and The Cultural History of
Childhood and the Family, Volume I: Antiquity (2010).
Katariina Mustakallio is Senior Lecturer of History and Dean of the School of

Languages, Translation and Literary Studies at the University of Tampere. With
Christian Laes she has edited The Dark Side of Childhood (2010) and with Laes
and Ville Vuolanto, Children and Family in Late Antiquity (2015). Her book,
Sive deus sive dea. La presenza della religione nello sviluppo della società romana
(2013), concentrates on religion in Roman society and history.
Notes on Contributors xi
Susanna Niiranen received her PhD at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland),

focusing on the Occitan women troubadours. Her own post-doctoral project
was called ‘Medicine without Doctors: sexuality, sleep and sound mind’, and it
examined the determinants of health in medieval vernacular remedy tradition.
Her publications concern various aspects of medieval literature, medicine,
gender and transmission of knowledge. Her current post is affiliated with the
University of Oxford, where she investigates Catharina Jagellonica within the

ERC-project ‘The Jagiellonians’.
Donatella Puliga studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (founded

in 1810) and currently teaches Classical Civilisation and Latin Language and
Literature at the University of Siena. Her interests concern the anthropological
dimension of Roman culture – to which she essentially devoted her studies –
as well as the forms of transmission of Latin cultural heritage. She has written
scientific and educational papers and books on themes of classical mythology,
Roman religion and teaching the Classics. She is interested in the permanence
and transformations of classical forms in contemporary society and culture.
Elina Pyy conducted her doctoral studies in the University of Helsinki,

Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, where she
received her PhD in 2014. Her research interests range from Roman poetry
and historiography to classical reception studies, gender studies and the history
of identities and mentalities. Pyy has published articles on the construction
of identity in Roman imperial poetry. Her dissertation examined gender and
Romanitas in war-centred epic of the early Principate.
Miikka Tamminen received his PhD at the University of Tampere in 2013

with a thesis focusing on the crusade model sermons of the thirteenth century.
He is currently working as a researcher at the School of Social Sciences and
Humanities at the University of Tampere. His research interests include the
Crusades, medieval sermons, the ‘just war’ tradition, and the monstrous races
of the Middle Ages. Tamminen has edited, with Christian Krötzl, Changing
Minds. Communication and Influence in the High and Later Middle Ages (2013).
Reima Välimäki graduated with his MA in General History from University of

Turku in 2011 and continued to doctoral studies in the department of Cultural
History. He has also studied in the Universities of Copenhagen and Wuppertal.
Currently Välimäki is writing his dissertation on inquisitions and anti-heretical
polemic against the German Waldenses at the end of the fourteenth century. He
has also published articles on heresy in medieval Sweden and Finnish twentieth-
century medievalism, and participated in the research project on the medieval
and early modern history of Rauma parish.
xii Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Jonas Van Mulder studied history at the University of Antwerp and the
Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia. He is an associate of the Ruusbroec Institute
Research Centre and History Department at the University of Antwerp. As
Aspirant of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO), he is currently
preparing a doctoral thesis on the representation of religious experience in late
medieval and early modern texts concerning contemporary miracles produced
in the Low Countries.

Preface
Many of the chapters included in this volume were presented in their preliminary
form in the conference Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages V: Infirmitas:
Social and Cultural Approaches to Cure, Caring and Health, organised by
Trivium – Tampere Centre for Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies
and held at the University of Tampere in August 2012. We wish to thank all the
participants of the conference for the lively discussions, exchange of ideas and
interest in the topic.
We also want to express our gratitude to the organising committee of the
‘Passages V’ conference, especially Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Jussi Rantala, Outi
Sihvonen, Miikka Tamminen and Ville Vuolanto. Conference secretaries
Mikko Pentti and Sonja Vistala, as well as our conference assistants, took care
of the practical matters efficiently. The funding received from The Federation
of Finnish Learned Societies, and the support of the School of Social Sciences
and Humanities at the University of Tampere and the City of Tampere made
organising the conference possible. We also want to extend our gratitude to Saku
Pihko for his assistance during the editorial process.
Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio and Jenni Kuuliala


Introduction
Infirmitas in Antiquity and the
Middle Ages
Jenni Kuuliala, Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Krötzl
Histories of various minorities in Antiquity and the Middle Ages have been
written in increasing numbers during the past few decades. Scholars have
focused on marginal groups in society such as the poor, foreigners and sexual
and religious minorities.1 One of the last minority groups to be considered has
been the chronically ill or impaired – often labelled as disabled.
Before the recently emerging scholarly interest in the (social) history of
bodily and mental afflictions, disabilities in the pre-modern world have received
attention at most as subplots in studies on the history of medicine, charity,
hagiography or poverty. Additionally, there have been attempts to write the
longue durée of Western disability, in which bodily defects or anomalies have
been connected with the development of land ownership, power networks
and labour.2 During the past decade or so, studies concentrating solely on
disability in the ancient and medieval world have been published in growing
1
It is not possible to list all such contributions here. For recent examples concerning
ancient societies, see e.g. Margaret Atkins and Robin Osborne, eds, Poverty in the Roman
World (2006); Christian Laes, Children in the Roman Empire: Outsiders Within (2011);
Jürgen Zangenberg and Michael Labahn, eds, Christians as a Religious Minority in a
Multicultural City: Modes of Interaction and Identity Formation in Early Imperial Rome
(2004). For the Middle Ages, see e.g. Sharon Farmer’s Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris.
Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor (2005); Bronisław Geremek, The Margins of
Society in Late Medieval Paris (2006); Michael E. Goodich, Other Middle Ages. Witnesses at
the Margins of Medieval Society (1998); Tom Linkinen, ‘Stinking deed, deepest love: Same-
sex sexuality in later medieval English culture’. PhD diss. University of Turku, 2013; Carole
Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (2006).
2
See Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe. Thinking about Physical
Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (2006), 11–20. For the
historiography of disability in ancient Greece, see also M. Lynn Rose, The Staff of Oedipus:
Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece (2013), 6–7. A comprehensive bibliography
of disability in Antiquity is available at the website ‘Disability History and the Ancient
World’. Accessed 25 June 2014, http://www.disability-ancientworld.com/bibliography/
bibliography.htm.
2 Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
numbers.3 These books have, on the one hand, sought to study the mentalities
and the lived realities of bodily difference and madness, and on the other, to
apply the theories developed in the social sciences to the study of pre-modern
history. One of the issues that has received most attention has been the usability
of the ‘social model of disability’ to historical studies.4 According to this theory,
‘impairment’ means a factual physical state, which exists regardless of the society
and its norms and conceptions. ‘Disability’, on the other hand, is the creation
of a given society and its norms, conceptions and restrictive practices. In other
words, while impairment is a biological or physical ‘fact’, the degree of disability
varies depending on the society in question.5
While this theory has been and remains an important starting point for
pre-modern studies – after all, ‘disability’ is a strictly cultural phenomenon,
defined in different ways in different societies6 – it has also received criticism
3
See e.g. Philippus Bosman, ed., Mania. Madness in the Greco-Roman World (2009);
Rupert Breitwieser, ed., Behinderungen und Beeinträchtigungen/Disability and Impairment
in Antiquity (2012); Franck Collard and Evelyne Samama, eds, Handicaps et sociétés dans
l’histoire: l’estropié, l’aveugle et le paralytique de l’Antiquité au temps modernes (2010);
Véronique Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (1993); Joshua R. Eyler, ed., Disability
in the Middle Ages Reconsiderations and Reverberations (2010); Bianca Frohne, Leben
mit ‘kranckhait’. Der gebrechliche Körper in der häuslichen Überlieferung des 15. und 16.
Jahrhunderts. Überlegungen zu einer Disability History der Vormoderne (2014); R. Garland,
The Eye of the Beholder. Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (2010);
Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose, eds, Disabilities in Roman Antiquity:
Disparate Bodies a capite ad calcem (2013); Irina Metzler, Disability; Irina Metzler, A Social
History of Disability. Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment (2013); Cordula Nolte,
ed., Homo debilis. Behinderte – Kranke – Versehrte in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (2009);
Cordula Nolte, ed., Phänomene der ‘Behinderung’ im Alltag. Bausteine zu einer Disability
History der Vormoderne (2013); Rose, The Staff of Oedipus; Wendy J. Turner, ed., Madness
in Medieval Law and Custom (2010); Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally
Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England (2012); Wendy J. Turner and Tory
Vandeventer Pearman, eds, The Treatment of Disabled Persons in Medieval Europe. Examining
Disability in the Historical, Legal, Literary, Medical, and Religious Discourses of the Middle
Ages (2010); Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind. Medieval Constructions of
a Disability (2010).
4
See e.g. Metzler, Disability, 2–3 and Rose, The Staff of Oedipus, 1–3, who use it as
their theoretical starting point.
5
On the social model, see Simi Linton, Claiming Disability. Knowledge and Identity
(1998), 11–12. For criticism of the model among social scientists, see e.g. B. Hughes
and K. Paterson, ‘The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body: Towards a
Sociology of Impairment’, Disability and Society 12/3 (1997): 325–40 and Tom Shakespeare,
Disability Rights and Wrongs (2006), 29–53.
6
The definition given by World Health Organization states that ‘disability’ is ‘an
umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An
impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty
Infirmitas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 3
among historians as too constructivist or because it often omits the fact that
‘impairment’ is culturally defined too.7 As Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey
and Martha Lynn Rose put it, it was not so long ago when a non-European
appearance was seen as a ‘disability’ in a Western society, and the same could
be said about being openly homosexual – or being a woman.8 Therefore the
notion of ‘impairment’ or ‘disability’ in our society cannot be transferred to
ancient and medieval societies, and the structures and conceptions that led
to the disablement of individual people varied significantly,9 being negotiated
within one’s cultural, familial and social sphere.10 As an example, conditions
as harmless as baldness, often appearing with age, could be seen as disabling in
ancient Rome, as pointed out in the article of Ray Laurence and Mary Harlow
in this volume, and sexual disorders, discussed by Susanna Niiranen, were one of
the grounds for the divorce and annulment of marriage in the Middle Ages, thus
being great social impediments.
Moreover, the whole conception of ‘impairment’, let alone ‘disability’, is
remarkably modern. No such term existed in ancient or medieval societies, but
the terminology to describe bodily or mental disparity was vague. In ancient
Greek texts, the words to describe physical anomalies were, for example, ‘maimed’
(pêros), ‘much-maimed’ (anapêros) or ‘ugliness’ (aischos). ‘Weakness’ (astheneia)
and ‘incompleteness’ (ateleia) were also used.11 In Latin sources from Antiquity
encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction

is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Disability is thus
not just a health problem. It is a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between
features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives’. ‘WHO |
Disabilities’, accessed 10 June 2014, http://www.who.int/topics/disabilities/en/.
7
See e.g. Joshua R. Eyler, ‘Introduction. Breaking Boundaries, Building Bridges’, in
Disability in the Middle Ages, 8; Julie Singer, ‘Playing by Ear: Compensation, Reclamation,
and Prosthesis in Fourteenth-Century Song’, in Disability in the Middle Ages, 39–52.
8
Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose, ‘Approaching Disabilities a capite ad
calcem: Hidden Themes in Roman Antiquity’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, 1–15, at 6.
9
A good example of this is the gender-specific laws. Both the Roman law codes and
medieval secular laws regulating ownership forbid inheritance from the deaf-mute, who were
not able to stipulate. In the studies on madness it has been noted that a large majority of
court cases regarding such matters considered men – not because they were more often mad,
but because sex already regulated a person’s legal status, or in other words, dis/abled them.
See Elizabeth W. Mellyn, Mad Tuscans and Their Families. A History of Mental Disorder in
Early Modern Italy (2014), 20; Irina Metzler, ‘Reflections on Disability in Medieval Legal
Texts: Exclusion – Protection – Compensation’, in Disability and Medieval Law. History,
Literature, Society, ed. Cory James Rushton (2013), 19–53. On deaf-muteness and law in
Antiquity, see Christian Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses. Deaf-mutes in Greco-Roman Antiquity’,
Classical World 104 (2011): 451–73.
10
Rose, The Staff of Oedipus, 3. She discusses this aspect throughout the book.
11
Ibid., 11–14.
to the Middle Ages, the concepts most commonly attached to bodily or mental
disparities are debilitas and infirmitas, translatable as ‘weakness’ or ‘infirmity’.12
Although modern scholars have been careful to take the vagueness of pre-
modern terminology into account, the aim to study historical ‘dis/ability’ is
always regulated by the perspective our own society has towards bodily and
mental difference, greatly coloured by the medicalization and pathologization of
permanent impairments, as well as the causality that bodily difference inevitably

leads to social restrictions. ‘Infirmity’ on the other hand has been defined by,
for example, Lennard J. Davis, as something to which the human body is prone
and something which affects every human being in one way or another.13 This
notion pertains to pre-modern societies as well, for the concept of ‘weakness’
was attached to different states of human existence or even culture, and the
terms used to describe bodily or mental disparities had additional cultural and
social connotations than being regarded only as anomalies. While ‘infirmity’ can
be seen as the counterpoint of ‘power’ especially in the discourses concerning
age, political power or wealth, it could also hold positive connotations. As an
example, in the Middle Ages, bodily suffering could disempower a person, but at
the same time also make it possible to imitate the passion of Christ.14 Then again,
in ancient society there appears to have been a shift in attitudes concerning the
wounds of leaders so that unlike in Greek society, in the Roman Empire war
wounds and other permanent injuries were seen as proof of soldiers’ military
value instead of being a sign of weakness or deficiency.15
The aim of this book is to investigate these varying cultural meanings and
associations of infirmity from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages. We are,
therefore, not concentrating only on illness or disability but on the different
ways infirmity could manifest itself in pre-modern Western societies, and how
these manifestations were understood and discussed both in learned discourses
and in social interaction. Some of the articles have their background in historical
dis/ability studies while others approach the question of infirmity through its
12
See e.g. Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Vorstellungen von menschlicher Gebrechlichkeit in
frühen Mittelalter’, in Homo debilis, 21–55; Metzler, Disability, 5.
13
Lennard J. Davis, ‘The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning of Dismodernism.
On Disability as an Unstable Category’, in Idem., Bending Over Backwards. Disability,
Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions. With A Foreword by Michael Bérubé (2002),
9–32. See also Bianca Frohne’s article in this volume.
14
Stanko Andric, The Miracles of St. John Capistran (2000), 242; Esther Cohen, The
Modulated Scream. Pain in Late Medieval Culture (2010) 28; Scott E. Pincikowski, Bodies of
Pain. Suffering in the Works of Hartmann Von Aue (2002), 15–16; Rawcliffe, Leprosy.
15
See Évelyne Samama, ‘A King Walking with Pain? On the textual and Iconographical
Images of Philip II and Other Wounded Kings’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, 231–48.
Physical impairment and whether it affected the social status of medieval elite is discussed in
Jenni Kuuliala’s article in this volume.
broader societal and religious meanings. Our intention is to examine deficiency

and frailty not only as a physical and social state but also as a more abstract,
cultural construct. We hope to be able to widen our understanding of how
physical and mental well-being and weakness were understood and constructed
in the longue durée from ancient to medieval societies. Analysing specifically
infirmity, and not only dis/ability or illness, the aim of the book is to provide new
insights into the on-going attempts to understand what kinds of differentiating

categories related to health/strength and illness/weakness existed in pre-modern
Western societies, what cultural and mental notions structured them and what
their social and communal dimensions were.
Due to the wide time span and topic, we do not attempt to draw a
comprehensive conclusion regarding all aspects of infirmity in Antiquity and
the Middle Ages. Most of the articles included in this volume are case studies
of certain phenomena. We, however, hope that this wide understanding of
infirmitas and its cultural and societal consequences and connotations provides
a synthesis of the possible approaches to the topic, and demonstrates how broad
a spectrum of mentalities was attached to the concept of infirmity. The aim of
this volume is to cross the traditional boundaries between time periods and
scholarship, as well as different theoretical approaches.
Defining Infirmitas
First we will approach infirmity as a fluid, differentiating category, examining

the diverse aspects of human life that could be viewed as creating weakness.
One of the goals of dis/ability historians has been to include dis/ability in the
wider discourse as a category similar to gender, age and social status, and for it
to be used as an analytical tool. All these factors greatly define a person’s lived
experience and their status in their social sphere but the influences are also
overlapping and shifting. The infirmity of a child could be a great problem for
the whole family, who sought to find a cure not only for the well-being of the
child, but for the future of the whole household.16 Respectively, old age brought
its own, age-specific disabilities. As demonstrated by Laurence and Harlow, in
the Roman world the ideal age for a ruling man (these notions do not pertain to
women as the authors point out) was 43; younger men were only on their way
towards this ideal while the elderly were hopelessly beyond it. Therefore, instead
See e.g. Cornelia B. Horn, ‘A Nexus of Disability in Ancient Greet Miracle Stories: A
16
Comparison of Accounts of Blindness from the Asklepieion in Epidauros and the Shrine of
Thecla in Seleucia’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, 115–43; Diana Webb, ‘Friends or the
Family: Some Miracles for Children by Italian Friars’, in The Church and Childhood, edited
by Diana Wood (1994), 183–95.
of bodily impairments, what could disable a person in power was their age, even
leading to mockery by others. Even this disabling category was, however, fluid: if
the person retained their physical and spiritual strength, age could be viewed as
something positive. In medieval society there was a similar ambivalence towards
the old, who could be both valued for their wisdom as well as ridiculed for their
old age. In the Middle Ages, old age and bodily infirmity could become a serious
problem more generally for a ruler but it did not, however, mean that a ruler
would lose his power – as in the texts concerning Roman emperors, the status of
the old who retained their bodily and mental strength could even be enhanced.17
Like the (negative) consequences of ageing, the possible disabling effects of
physical impairment were equally negotiated in the cultural sphere. A specific,
illuminating group are ‘dwarfs’ – or people with restricted growth – whose status
in Ancient Greece is discussed in the chapter by Véronique Dasen. In a culture
which greatly favoured depictions of the idealized human body, the frequent
portrayal of them in iconography suggests that dwarfism was indeed viewed as
a positive anomaly. The portrayals did underscore the difference of those with
restricted growth but it did not marginalize or disable them. As Dasen points
out, despite the admiration of physical beauty in Greek (and also Roman) art, it
was well known that this was an unreachable ideal. Equally, some scholars have
observed that the whole concept of ‘normalcy’ did not exist before the mid-
nineteenth century, but the predominant paradigm was ‘ideal’, which no human
can reach – whether it concerns the body, mind or soul.18
Instead of comparing human bodies with what was considered ‘normal’,
infirmity of a pre-modern body was greatly defined in the context of the
person’s social role. Bianca Frohne analyses in her chapter how the writers of
late medieval and early modern autobiographies portrayed their own infirmity.
Here overcoming the disabling effects of an infirmity in order to fulfil one’s
social role appears as a definitive factor while the body itself is largely absent.
The importance of a person’s social status and how different infirmities affected
it has been pointed out by some other scholars as well, showing for their part the
fluidity of what, evidently, disabled a person and how an individual could and
was expected to act against such consequences.19
See e.g. Sarah Gordon, ‘Representations of Aging and Disability in Early Sixteenth-
17
Century France’, in Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Interdisciplinary
Approaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. Albrecht Classen (2007), 421–36; Metzler, Disability,
163–5; Metzler, A Social History, 105–15. See also Gesine Jordan, ‘Kranke Herrscher und
Herrschaftsanwärter in der Karolingerzeit’, in Homo debilis, 243–62.
18
See Davies, Bending over Backwards, 105; Joseph N. Straus, Extraordinary Measures.
Disability in Music (2011), 115.
19
See e.g. Jenni Kuuliala, ‘Disability and Social Integration. Constructions of
Childhood Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes’.
The question about infirmity and maintaining one’s social role is also the
focus of Jenni Kuuliala’s chapter. She discusses the way that the secular elite’s
infirmities – mainly physical impairments – and their social consequences were
depicted in late medieval canonization processes. Because of the rarity of the
elite’s cures of prolonged physical conditions, it has been assumed that the elite
was reluctant to report them due to being ashamed of showing their bodily
weakness. The analysis, however, shows that the depictions of social relations
and the attitudes towards the infirmity of the elite do not differ from those with
a lower social status. Instead infirmity and disability were greatly defined by the
fulfilment of one’s social role, whereas care was received among one’s peers. The
hagiographic religious and literate context of the source material can be seen as
largely explaining the scarcity of noblemen and noblewomen’s cures, proposing
new possibilities for the study of the miraculous, infirmity and one’s social status.
As also discussed in the chapter by Harlow and Laurence, mental infirmitas
and in/capacity was largely culture-specific as well. Similar symptoms are
observable in ancient texts as they are today, but, at the same time, mental
health and disorders are always negotiated in a given culture.20 The connection
between ancient and modern views is further investigated by Donatella Puliga,
who discusses the ancient views of psychological distress and if they can be seen
as the roots for the modern notes of depression. As observed by Puliga, such
mental afflictions are easily hidden in contemporary attentions and, moreover,
studies of mental disability or lack of mental health in both Antiquity and the
Middle Ages have been strongly influenced by the more modern demonization
of mental discrepancies.21
PhD diss. University of Tampere, 2013; Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses’; Lisa Trentin, ‘Exploring
Visual Impairment in Ancient Rome’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, 89–114.
20
Patricia A. Clark and M. Lynn Rose, ‘Psychiatric Disability and the Galenic Medical
Matrix’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, 45–72. See also Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Demonic
Possession as Physical and Mental Disturbance in the Later Medieval Canonization
Processes’, in Mental (Dis)Order in Later Medieval Europe, eds Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and
Susanna Niiranen (2014), 108–26; Turner, Care and Custody, 24–8.
21
See C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose, ‘Mental States, Bodily Dispositions and Table
Manners’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity, 17–44. On the Galenic views of mental
illnesses in ancient world, see Clark and Rose, ‘Psychiatric Disability’. On the historiography
of mental illness in the Middle Ages, see e.g. Wendy J. Turner, ‘Introduction’, in Madness
in Medieval Law and Custom, 1–16 and for learning disabilities in early modern Europe,
C.F. Goodey, A History of Intelligence and ‘Intellectual Disability’: The Shaping of Psychology
in Early Modern Europe (2011). On further examinations on mental health in the Middle
Ages, see Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Susanna Niiranen, eds, Mental (Dis)Order in Later
Medieval Europe (2014).
Weakness in Community
The second part of the book discusses societal and cultural infirmitas: how the
concept of infirmity was attached to religious and/or communal phenomena.
Imitatio Christi was an important concept in later medieval thinking, meaning
that physical pain and suffering made it possible to imitate the passion of
Christ and even lead to salvation. By the thirteenth century, many theologians
considered this possibility to be a blessing of illness; it made people suffer, which
they did not wish to do, and pointing out the positive consequences of suffering
was one way how medieval preachers – and the society at large – could cope
with illness.22
Imitating Christ’s suffering was also typical of the various religious movements
of the later Middle Ages, especially among the flagellants.23 Stigmata, a bodily
infirmity that enabled imitating the passion of Christ, are investigated in the
two chapters which open this part of the book. Miikka Tamminen discusses
the theme of the stigmata and imitatio Christi in the context of crusading and
crusade ideology. In the discourse of crusading, the possibility of imitating
Christ’s suffering was both a motivational tool and something expected of a true
crusader. At the same time, the stigmata of those taking part in the campaigns
and the ecclesiastics supporting their cause at home were connected: the latter
could also participate in the imitatio Christi with spiritual methods, therefore
connecting inner penance and religious practices with physical wounds. As
demonstrated by Gábor Klaniczay, from the time of St Francis of Assisi (d. 1226)
up to today, stigmata have been an often controversial characteristic attributed
to several saints and were already being discussed by medical writers in the
Middle Ages, appearing as a very specific type of infirmitas. In this context, and
in the larger ideals about the advantages of suffering, an infirm human body
could actually serve as a means of communication between God and humans.
Infirmity could also be seen as a metaphor for the state of the community,
and just as the human body, it could be attacked by an illness. Reima Välimäki
considers the imagery of illness, poisons and healing in the late medieval writings
against the Waldensian heresy, demonstrating that an infirmity as a metaphor
was carefully chosen to provide a background for the arguments used. Since the
appearance of heretical movements, Christianity was seen to be under constant
danger. The connection between dissidence and impurity has its origins in
Christian polemics of Late Antiquity but there was a shift in the vocabulary and
22
Cohen, The Modulated Scream, 188–9. See also E. Tinsley, ‘The Imitation of God
in Christ: An Essay on the Biblical Basis of Christian Spirituality’ (1960); Giles Constable,
Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought. The Interpretation of Mary and
Martha; The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ; The Orders of Society (1995).
23
See e.g. Gary Dickson, Religious Enthusiasm in Medieval West (2000).
the development of the language used. Leprosy, the imagery of which was rather
vivid and didactic in the Middle Ages,24 as well as infectious pestilence, were
used sparingly. Instead, Waldensianism was a poison, distributed in secrecy and
corrupting the soul; the imagery being adapted to the specific views the writer
had of the heresy.
How infirmity and cure of a people could be used in Roman literature is
discussed in the chapter by Katariina Mustakallio and Elina Pyy. Analysing

Livy’s Ad urbe condita, they ask how he used history as a remedy for the sickness
of a nation trying to leave its painful past behind. According to Mustakallio and
Pyy, Livy uses the term remedium in the context of social justice and building
of the nation. His stories are by and large dominated by a male perspective and
heroic, political masculinity. Nevertheless, the issues concerning the proper
Roman gender order are repetitively raised in the Ab urbe condita; most often,
they appear to be connected to moments of weakness, where an external threat
to the community forces the Romans to reconsider their own values and
gender dynamics.
Healing Methods and Social Sphere
For a long time permanent impairing conditions were largely defined through
the so-called medical model of disability, which used to be prominent in
Western societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when impaired
persons became institutionalized as medicine developed. The medical model, or
medicalization of disability, has been seen as harmful for people with disabilities,
and it leads, as Edward Wheatley puts it, to the idea of ‘human variation as
deviance from the norm, as pathological condition, as deficit, and, significantly,
an individual burden and personal tragedy’.25 Medicine is also present in modern
discussions where disability is greatly marked by permanence and illness as
something that can be healed or that leads to death. This conception ignores
several chronic illnesses, which are not fatal, as well as fatal traumatic injuries,
but it has been noted that in medieval thinking similar views can be detected
especially in medical writings.26
24
See e.g. Susan Zimmerman, ‘Leprosy in the Medieval Imaginary’, Journal of Medieval
& Early Modern Studies 38/3 (2008): 559–87.
25
Edward Wheatley, ‘Blindness, Discipline, and Reward: Louis IX and the Foundation
of the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts’, Disability Studies Quarterly 22 (2002), 194–212, at 196.
26
Metzler, Disability, 71; Metzler, A Social History, 6. On the medieval ‘medicalization’
process, see also Rachel Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate. Miracle Stories and Miracle
Collecting in High Medieval England (2011), 183–7; Singer, ‘Playing by Ear’, 40–41; Joseph
Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and Saints: Medical Men in Canonization Processes in the Thirteenth
to Fifteenth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine (1997): 191–225.
The social aspects of curing have been the focus of the history of pre-modern
medicine during the past decades, but studies analysing dis/ability and infirmity
from its point of view are still sparse.27 The last six chapters of the volume
attempt to analyse infirmity and disability in the social sphere, concentrating
on the societal attitudes and conceptions of various infirmities, and how the
different healing methods are related to infirmitas.
Svetlana Hautala’s chapter considers how a drug as a healing method can

become a counterpoint or a metaphor of the infirmity it is working against. The
understanding about various drugs has, throughout centuries, been dependent on
not only the chemical and biological reactions in the human body, but the origins
of the drug play an important role as well. Drugs are also strongly connected with
social networks. As Hautala points out, a condition that made a person dependent
on the help, care and cure given by others was a moment that could redefine
social relations. Her examination of the development of the concept of drugs
demonstrates the need to explore this bidirectional connection, and how essential
the healing is for our understanding of illness or infirmity, its counterpart.
The chapters by Alison Griffith, Ria Berg and Susanna Niiranen further
investigate pre-modern drugs and other healing methods, and their usage in the
social sphere. Griffith examines the pre-Roman bathing sites and their usage as
the base for later Roman curative waters. Although the bathing sites did not
necessarily act as locations for the veneration of gods, the presence of votive
gifts and inscriptions suggests that gods were present in them. Therefore starting
from these early healing waters, religious activity was in constant interaction
with curative techniques.28
Ria Berg’s chapter further discusses the importance of water and the social
integration in the healing of the infirm in Roman iconography and Pompeian
households, where ablution was an important ritualistic act. Bathing concerned
not only the ill but it was essential throughout a person’s life from the bathing
of the newborn to water basins being depicted in the iconography of death.
The important iconographic role given to the water basins used in ablutions
27
For the social history of medicine in ancient society, see e.g. Garland, The Eye of the
Beholder; P. Burguiere, Danielle Gourevitch and Y. Malinas, eds, Soranos d’Ephese, Maladies
des femmes. Tome I–IV (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988–2000); Danielle Gourevitch,
ed., Maladie et Maladies: histoire et conceptualization (1992). On the social history of
medicine in the Middle Ages, see e.g. Joan Cadden, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the
Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (1995); Monica H. Green, Making Women’s
Medicine Masculine. The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (2008); Michael
McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague. Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon,
1285–1345 (1993); Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England
(1995).
28
The belief in the curative powers of water continued well into the Middle Ages and
Renaissance. See e.g. Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Demonic Possession’, 108–16.
connects the rite and its various meanings – curing the infirmi included – with
the cycle of life.
The curative techniques depicted in ancient and medieval writings considered
not only bodily aches and pains but also other conditions that could make a person
be regarded as infirm from the social point of view. An illuminating case study of
this aspect of infirmity is provided by Susanna Niiranen. Her chapter discusses
the remedies in medieval recipe collections for sexual disorders, mainly sexual
incapacities, which, as mentioned above, could have severe social consequences.
In medieval theoretical thinking, coitus could be one of the non-naturals acting as
determinants of health. It enabled getting rid of harmful bodily superfluities, while
also including wide-reaching social and emotional connotations. After all, fertility
was always connected with sexual acts. In addition to infertility, the recipes provide
cures for hypersexuality, impotence and wounds in the genitals. The recipes – and
therefore also the conceptions of sexual infirmitas – are gendered, for besides
venereal diseases, the ailments of women only include problems in menstruation
and impregnation. The recipes were produced for the general need, as well as
education and curiosity, showing that even in such intimate areas of human life
those with problems were not left without support.
As already discussed in Griffith’s chapter, different types of healing sites and
shrines have been important for the cure and care of the infirm since pre-Roman
times. The earliest healing sites were never intended to be institutions of healing
but rather provided multi-layered experiences of rituals.29 Having their roots
in ancient traditions and biblical miracles, from the beginning of Christianity,
saints’ shrines have been a location for those with various kinds of infirmities to
seek help. Later, the help of saints could also be received by addressing a saint in
one’s domestic sphere. The two last chapters of the collection discuss the various
aspects of sanctity and healing. Jonas Van Mulder’s analyses the social relations in
one late medieval Dutch town, Amersfoort, based on the local miracle collection
of the Virgin Mary. Investigating how the infirmi and their social networks are
portrayed in the miracles, Van Mulder investigates the confraternities and the
sociability of the location, and how it related to the experience of infirmity.
As demonstrated by Van Mulder, miracle collections can reveal substantial
information about the social attitudes towards the sick, where ‘altruism’ plays a
significant role, simultaneously offering models of behaviour. Christian Krötzl’s
chapter ends the collection with an analysis of the mechanisms of illnesses when
caused by a spiritual agent as well as the actions of the petitioners, saints and
various healers and other medical professionals in medieval miracula, which act
as illustrative examples of medieval medical pluralism.30
29
See Horn, ‘A Nexus of Disability’, 115–43.
30
For the term, see David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy
(1998).

PART I
Defining Infirmity and Disability

Chapter 1
Age, Agency and Disability:
Suetonius and the Emperors of the
First Century CE
Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence
Introduction
The emperors of the first century AD appear in our sources as far from perfect,
but some of them seem to have been less than perfect rulers, not due to any
physical disability, but due to the simple fact that they may have been too old or
too young to have performed the role effectively. This observation allows us to
consider how age may have been seen to prevent the effective agency of a Roman
emperor. This study of age and agency is played out with reference to the emperor
Claudius, whose disability affected how he was treated by other members of the
imperial family. We will argue that age caused emperors to become unable to act,
and if too old to be at risk of being deposed. This is a quite different conception
of disability than those previously published in the study of Antiquity.1
1
Robert Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Greco-
Roman World (1995) set the parameters for the subject area with a book length study.
Nicholas Vlahogiannis, ‘Disabling Bodies’, in Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings. Studies
on the Human Body in Antiquity, ed. Dominic Montserrat (1998), 13–54 is a full treatment
of the subject and recognizes the role of ageing in the construction of disability in Antiquity
with a key focus on establishing a link between disability and social/emotional exclusion
from society that included moral and social isolation, as well as political disempowerment.
Strangely, this study omits reference to Claudius. James H. Oliver, ‘Disability in the Roman
Military Lists’, Rheinishes Museum (1957): 242–4 for discussion of usage of terminology
applied to the military. Christian Laes, ‘Learning from Silence: Disabled Children in Roman
Antiquity’, Arctos 42 (2008): 85–122 focuses discussion on children and disability. Nicholas
Vlahogiannis, ‘Curing Disability’, in Health in Antiquity, ed. Helen King (2005), 180–91
clarifies the shifting discourse and changes associated with Christianity. On Christian
writing and disability, see Laes, ‘Disabled Children in Gregory of Tours’, in The Dark Side
of Childhood in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Unwanted, Disabled and Lost, eds
Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Laes (2011), 39–64.
Disability and the Life Course
Today, we recognize disability as both a mental and/or physical condition. The

2011 World Report on Disability suggests that up to 15 per cent of the human
population are disabled with some 50 per cent of the population of the USA
experiencing some form of mental disorder at some point in their lifetime.2
Interestingly, most disabilities are only recognized in adulthood (80 per cent),
while less than 10 per cent are recognized prior to the age of one year (9 per
cent). This latter statistic is important, when we consider that in Antiquity, a
reason for exposing infants was their disability.3 If most disabilities cannot
be recognized prior to the age of one year today, this would suggest that the
disabled not only survived and were present in Antiquity but can be found, if
we look harder, in classical literature. The emperor Claudius was not exposed at
birth perhaps because his disability was not apparent since it was his movement
and speech that was impaired, and his twitch or nervous tick developed later.
Portraits of Claudius have been studied and identify asymmetry of eye-sockets,
neck-muscle and other features as indications of disability.4 For about 100 years,
it has been suggested that Claudius suffered from a form of cerebral palsy – a
condition that becomes more apparent six to nine months after birth.5 Thus, we
should not see the disabled as absent from the Roman world, nor consider the
examples we know of to be exceptional, assuming others were exposed at birth.
However, as others have suggested, the Roman concept of disability might
be quite different to our own and subject to some variation over time.6 For
example, the attitude towards hermaphrodites and bodies that might have been
described as ‘different’ or ‘other’ changed from the middle Republic when they
were seen as prodigies, to becoming objects of curiosity under the empire.7 The
emperor Galba, who inherited spinal characteristics perhaps similar to those of
the English king Richard III, undressed in front of his future wife to ensure she
was aware of his crooked spine.8 This did not cause him to be seen as particularly
2
All numbers and figures given here are from: K. Hanson, T. Neuman and S.G. Carlsson,
Understanding the Health Care Needs and Experiences of People with Disabilities (2013).
3
William V. Harris, ‘Child Exposure in the Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies
84 (1994): 1–22; compare Laes ‘Learning from Silence’, 92–9.
4
Elmer G. Suhr, ‘A portrait of Claudius’, American Journal of Archaeology 59 (1955):
319–22.
5
Thomas DeCoursey Ruth, The Problem of Claudius (1916), 133–7 – seen as the most
satisfactory explanation by Barbara Levick, Claudius (1990), 13 with 200 note 7 for further
bibliography from the mid-twentieth century.
6
Garland, The Eye of the Beholder, uses a modern legal definition of disability.
7
Ray Laurence, Roman Passions (2009), 141–50; Garland, The Eye of the Beholder,
45–58, 67–72.
8
Suet. Galba 3.4.
Age, Agency and Disability 17
disabled, since he engaged with public life, commanded soldiers and so on. What
caused him to be seen as incapacitated was his age, which created a sense of his
own vulnerability to the agency of soldiers in civil war.9 Interestingly, Galba’s
father’s spinal impairment was visible and was the source of jokes by the emperor
Augustus.10 This chimes well with the correspondence between Augustus and
Livia presented by Suetonius in relation to Claudius’ appearance in public and a
desire to prevent the young man from being mocked; and with Seneca’s satirical
criticism of his speech and his body after his death.11 Here we can identify a
discourse that maps onto a modern conception of disability as a ‘social category
that contributes to the exclusion of and prejudice against people with bodily
or cognitive variations’.12 The exclusion of Claudius occurred because he was
categorized as different and, to a certain extent, moulded through exclusion as
different. Yet, in our source material the category of his disability is unstated or
undefined and a heavy emphasis is placed on the agency of others to influence
him, notably his wives and freed slaves.13 The roles of wives and freedmen is not
unique to the reign of Claudius, but can be found articulated in Tacitus’ Agricola
in statements about freedmen in the court of Domitian (41) and his comment
that a wife is more than half-responsible for a good or bad marriage (6). The issue
at stake is the agency of the emperor in relation to the agency of others, perhaps,
most clearly articulated by Plutarch in his lives of Galba and Otho,14 but also
applicable to the biographies of Suetonius: the impact of vice and extravagance
on the young Nero, for example, which results in the emperor being powerless to
act in the face of Vindex’s rebellion.15 Tacitus takes this idea a stage further in his
account of Claudius’ principate by creating a narrative in which Claudius’ role
or even presence is eclipsed by that of Agrippina in order to present a critique
of a ‘harmless and insignificant’ Claudius, whose lack of control provides the
9
Plut. Galba 8.1, 16.5, see Rhiannon Ash, ‘Severed heads. Individual Portraits and
Irrational Forces in Plutarch’s Galba and Otho’, Plutarch and His Intellectual World, ed.
J. Mosman (1997), 189–214 provides a full analysis of these passages and others referred to
in this section of our chapter.
10
Macrobius Sat. 2.4.8.
11
Suet. Claud. 3–4; Garland, The Eye of the Beholder, 40–42. See also Susanna Morton
Braund and Paula James, ‘Quasi homo: Distortion and Contortion in Seneca’s Apocolycyntosis’,
Arethusa 31 (1998): 285–311; Osgood, Josiah, ‘The Vox and Verba of an Emperor: Claudius,
Seneca and le Prince Ideal’, The Classical Journal 102 (2007): 329–53.
12
Tamar Heller and Sarah Parker Harris, Disability Through the Life Course (2012), 2.
13
Judith Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina. Constructions of Female Power in the
Early Roman Empire (2006), 22–35 for full analysis of the literary creation of the powerful
Agrippina.
14
Plut. Galba 1; Ash, ‘Severed Heads’.
15
Suet. Nero 40–44.
context for the emergence of a dangerous evil stepmother and female dux.16
Indeed, Tacitus has been shown to use comic techniques to invert power
relations in his characterization of Claudius’ reign in Annals books XI and
XII.17 This makes freedmen and wives the main protagonists with Claudius in a
subservient, unknowing or forgetful role. Little of this comic genre crosses into
Suetonius’ Claudius,18 and creates a need to understand his biography within
the wider context of writings on age and agency in Antiquity and, specifically,
Suetonius’ deployment of age categories in his biographies of the early emperors.
The absence of agency on the part of the ruler of the Roman Empire is, for us,
a means to understand how ‘disability’ was perceived in the Roman Empire;
and underpinning most conceptions of this absence of agency was the age of
the person in question. However, in the case of Claudius, appearance was an
important signifier of his character due to his gait and speech. The description
of an emperor’s appearance at the end of each of Suetonius’ lives appears to
provide a further proof of their character as described in the earlier accounts of
their deeds and sayings. Interestingly, ageing created similar signifiers of the loss
of virility and power: Karen Cokayne suggests that the ageing Roman became
disabled through failing sight or the presence of baldness. This would suggest
that the Roman concept of disability was rather wider than our own and could
include elements that were introduced through the ageing process, including
physical processes as innocuous as the loss of hair.19
Conceptions of the Stages of the Human Lifespan
In Antiquity the concept that the human lifespan was split up into a number
of quite distinct stages was well-developed, comprising numerous mathematical
divisions. Tim Parkin has examined all of the schemes and sees them as having
little basis in or on actual biological and human experience, but served instead
as a powerful literary topos (see Table 1.1).20 This idea can be extended further
and, we might suggest, the articulation was a means to identify the strengths
and weaknesses associated with the age of others, which could have a practical
value for the writing of rhetorical speeches. The schemes and their divisions
that articulated perceptions of the qualities and weaknesses of each stage of
life are set out as Table 1.1. Of course, there were exceptional individuals who
demonstrated that they could both contribute to public life and live well –
Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina, 22–32.
16
Sheila K. Dickison, ‘Claudius: Saturnalicus Princeps’, Latomus 36 (1977): 634–47.

17
18
Apart from at Suet. Claud. 29, discussed by Dickison ‘Claudius’, 645–6.
19
K. Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age (2003), 12–15.
20
Tim Parkin, ‘Life Cycle’, in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in Antiquity,
eds Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence (2010), 97–114.
whilst facing up to the negative connotations of old age. One very clear example
was Appius Claudius Caecus, who was both old and blind but appears as a key
character Cicero’s De Senectute.21 The view of the stages of the human lifespan
point to a concept by which man (these do not apply to women) gained in
ability or the capacity to understand and to act wisely. This process reached a
tipping point at some stage in adulthood, after which deterioration into old
age was an expectation. It is in middle-age that we find the greatest capacity

to act. In the discussion of systems of age with a focus on multiples of seven,
this results in the age of 42 – incidentally the age at which Trajan was said to
have become emperor: an ideal age. This point, in a man’s early 40s, can be seen
as either a transition moment to a new stage in the lifespan (cf. Solon’s and
Ptolemy’s categorizations) or is found at the end of the phase associated with
terms such as iuventus or iuvenis. In such schemes, 42 was seen as a conclusion
to the maturation of the individual and the transition into the later stages of life.
If those at the age of about 42 had the greatest capacity to act, then those at an
earlier age or a later age were seen to have less of a capacity to take action.
Although Parkin argues that these schemes that divide the lifespan into
phases were literary devices or topoi, there is similarity if not congruence with
Roman cultural practices.22 This is evident not least in the Roman sense of the
mos maiorum that systematically excluded the young from power and developed
a conception of the youngest point at which a man might progress to the office
of consul.23 The progression through the various magistracies at the fastest, yet
legal, pace was used by Cicero to announce his ability to act and was combined
with his worth as a novus homo to achieve esteem. This also plays on the fact that
as a novus homo (new man), some may have regarded him as less able than those
with prestigious and noble ancestors and thus Cicero overcomes both social
disadvantage and social prejudice.24 That this social disadvantage can then be
turned into a merit points to the complex way in which merit of a person was
created through naming prejudices against them. The way the mos maiorum maps
onto the various stages of life in Table 1.1 (below, p. 27) is worth consideration
and shows that the age of 25 in the Augustan Empire (earliest office holding)
and also the earliest age at which men were expected to be married under the
Lex Papia Poppaea, simply does not appear.25 The absence of 25 reveals more
about the Augustan recalibration of age than about the age schemes and should
only be understood within the social realm of elite politics and the role of the
elite in the new Augustan res publica (republic). Unlike the young Octavian in
21
Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age, 93–104.
22
Parkin, ‘Life Cycle’.
23
For discussion and references see Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence, Growing Up and
Growing Old in Ancient Rome – A Life Course Approach (2002), 104–16.
24
Cic. Leg. Agr. 2.3–4.
25
Dio 52.42.
44 BC, those under the age of 25 from 27 BC onwards were to have a limitation
placed upon their role in the res publica due to their age; a limitation that was
justified with reference to Roman law regarding the agency of those under 25
to undertake business transactions. Effectively, these laws reflected a prejudice
and ensured the young men would not gain access to the senate prior to the age
of 25. However, through the development of the office of the vignitiviri, the
young members of the elite (seen as destined for and having a future capacity in
middle age) were trained up in their early 20s as subordinates to older and more
powerful magistrates.26 This identifies for us a key principle in Roman thinking,
the young, though unable to hold office due to their age, would be enabled to act
in the future through association with older men undertaking a key role that the
younger man might take up later, once he has attained the right age.
Suetonius’ Claudius – Understanding Age and Defining Disability
Embedded within the structure of Suetonius’ biographies of the Twelve Caesars

are a series of conceptions of age,27 ranging from birth and infancy through
boyhood, adulescentia and onto the subject of the biography as a iuvenis. There is
also frequent reference to the transition from wearing a toga praetexta to wearing
a toga virilis in a good number of Suetonius’ lives, as well as the use of the word
aetatis. As a whole, we may see the use of these age-related words and concepts
by Suetonius as a means of explaining the progression of his subject through the
lifespan. We will re-examine Claudius in relation to the deployment of these
terms and seek to understand how his ‘disability’ was articulated in relation to
his age and that particular point in his life course.
Suetonius sets up in the very early life of Claudius the relation between illness
and identity that were to define him and, in so doing, Suetonius deploys most
age-related terminologies associated with childhood and young adulthood.28
Claudius has most of the age-related phases of childhood: as an infans – he
lost his father. Illness is only recorded during (throughout) his pueritia and
Dio 54.26.5.
26
Donna Hurley, Suetonius Divus Claudius (2001), 79–81 on Claudius and age;
27
Jacques Gascou, Suétone Historien (1984), 587–9 on marriages of Claudius; Alcide Macé,
Essai sur Suétone (1900), 43–7 for Suetonius’ experience of infantia, pueritia, adulescentia.
28
Suet. Claud. 2; Hurley, Claudius, 79–81; Laes, ‘Learning from Silence’, 97, highlights
how Claudius accepts then exposes naked the daughter of his wife Urgulanilla (father was
the freedman, Boter) as an example of a disabled child – see Suet. Claud. 27, which does not
make clear whether the child was disabled and the alternative that Claudius acted in anger
with reference to his ex-wife’s affair needs further consideration. The child may be seen to
be socially disabled and a stigma. The whole episode illustrates Claudius’ lack of agency and
indecision, even when he does act to kill the child.
adulescentia and is not connected to his infancy. The result of continual illness
was set out as he came of age (aetatis), and defined as incapacity which causes
him to be unable to give public or private munera, and a need for him to remain
in tutela. Due to on-going illness, he was the first person to preside at the
games (given by his brother Germanicus) wearing a cloak. His assumption of
the toga virilis was conducted in public but at night and he was transported
in a litter without family members in attendance. This account sets us up with

an emerging adult, who is disabled and unable to act. It is in the next section
that Suetonius dwells on Claudius as a young man, ab aetate prima (in early
adulthood), seeking recognition through publication of his written work, but
unable to obtain dignitas (dignity).29
It is at the age of 21 or 22 that we see the dilemma Claudius presents to
the aged Augustus and Tiberius in a letter to Livia, quoted by Suetonius.30
Looking to the future, Augustus suggests that if he was ‘in command of his
five senses’, he could have been advanced in the same way that his elder brother
Germanicus had been – but if ‘handicapped’ his path led in another direction.
The key impediment was that of movement, posture and gait.31 The discussion
was triggered by the upcoming games of Mars, but Augustus wanted to set up
a protocol so that each occasion such as this would not result in a discussion of
the public role of Claudius. Augustus’ fear was based on a realization that the
public ridiculed those who appeared different. His immediate plan was to let
Claudius preside at the dinner of priests at Ludi Martialibus, with kinsman on
hand to ensure he did not look ridiculous, but at the games he was not sitting the
imperial box with the rest of the imperial family. Looking to the upcoming Latin
festival, Augustus wished to ensure Claudius did not attend with Germanicus
at Mount Albano or even be in Rome, because if he did attend, he might see
the post of City Prefect as attainable. The only official role Augustus permitted
Claudius to have was that of augur and Claudius inherited relatively little from
Augustus in AD 14 (800,000 sesterces). This policy of exclusion from office
holding was also followed by Tiberius, suggesting the decision on how to deal
with Claudius was taken in the final years of Augustus’ reign by both Tiberius
and Augustus as the joint holders of tribunicia potestas (tribunician power). The
result was for Claudius to withdraw to the suburbs of Rome or to his villa in
Campania.32 Having clarified the policy of Augustus and Tiberius, Suetonius
then complicates the image of the powerless Claudius with reference to times
in which a public role was assumed by him in his 20s and 30s under Tiberius.33
29
Suet. Claud. 3.
30
Suet. Claud. 4.
31
Timothy O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture (2011), 29–31.
32
Suet. Claud. 5.
33
Suet. Claud. 6.
He led delegations of the equites (knights) and was appointed by the senate to
a priesthood of Augustus; whilst both equites and the senate respected him in
public – perhaps because he utilized consular regalia – Tiberius consistently
prevented him from having a role in the senate with reference to his disability.
The choices of succession open to Tiberius were set out by Tacitus as a choice
between Claudius at a good age (aetate bonorum) in his mid-40s, Caligula in
robust iuventus in his early 20s or the adolescent Tiberius Gemellus in his early
to mid-teens (in pubertas).34 Claudius was discounted due to a perception of
mental impairment and Caligula and Tiberius Gemellus became the heirs to
the elderly emperor. Looking at Table 1.1, we can see the effect of the exclusion
of Claudius in the context of the stages of life and in relation to the mos
maiorum – he was denied a public role at the very time of life when one might
have been expected.
Claudius’ 40s (a good age) were marked not by achievement but by the
ridicule that Augustus and Tiberius had sought to shield him from. Suetonius
sets out the context for his ridicule by Caligula, because the emperor regarded
the interpretation by the senate of his relationship with his uncle as that of a
child in need of a guardian – Claudius is said to have been thrown into a river
fully dressed on arrival in Germany.35 At the age of 50 Claudius became emperor.
Looking at Table 1.1, the age of 50 is a transition point that marks him at less
of a good age (associated with his early 40s), but places him in early old age.
Moreover, the models for contributing to the well-being of the res publica at this
stage of life based their contribution, if we read Cicero De senectute, on an earlier
stage of life which included public service. Such a role had been denied Claudius
and he was thus seen to have been doubly impaired on becoming emperor at
50: disabled and inexperienced. These features should be added to those other
negative aspects of old age that can be found in Latin literature.36 Much of what
follows in Suetonius concerns Claudius’ public role over the course of the next
14 years until he died at the age of 64.37 The remarkable feature for Suetonius is
Claudius’ ability to gain the qualities of emperors – Auctoritas dignitasque formae
(a body with authority and dignity) – when standing or reclining, an aspect of
the young Claudius said by Suetonius to be recognized by Augustus.38 This can
be understood as a disability, because as Tim O’Sullivan has shown, walking and
an appropriate gait was a key element of a person’s identity – Claudius simply
does not shape up when walking.39 The parallel between the Claudius as emperor
and the Claudius as a young man is apparent here, and also in the conception of
34
Tac. Ann. 6.46.
35
Suet. Claud. 8–9.
36
See Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age.
37
Suet. Claud. 14–26.
38
Suet. Claud. 4.
39
O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture.
the older Claudius as the servant of his wives and freed slaves – almost as though
their relationship was not dissimilar to that of Claudius as an adult still having a
tutor.40 There is clarity here, Claudius is created in these texts as powerless with
power taken from him by those who might, in other circumstances, care for an
older man – a (younger) wife/wives and trusted freed slaves.41
Emperors – the Interplay of Age and Disability
The example of Claudius has been discussed at some length, because his inability
to be an effective ruler depended on an explicit approach set in motion by the
fact that the people would ridicule him at the Ludi Martialis (Games of Mars)
in AD 12. It prompted discussion of his disability and the effect this had on
his public role. However, most of Suetonius’ other emperors can be found to
be disabled in respect of a convergence between their age and their personality.
It is important to bear in mind that Suetonius views earlier emperors within a
framework that creates Trajan and Hadrian as reference points with the former
as optimus princeps (‘most excellent emperor’) and wielding imperial power from
the age of 42 until his death at the age of 63.42 Interestingly, Trajan died at an
age at which many Romans expected to die, with both 42 and 63 being neat
multiples of seven – conforming to Solon’s division of age in Table 1.1. There
is a contrast between the ideal of Trajan at the perfect age with Vespasian, who
Suetonius could remember for a dictum (a saying) that made reference to his age.
At his triumph, the emperor experienced what only royalty can know – a slow
procession during which the monarch is on public display. Vespasian revelled
in this moment commenting on his self-inflicted discomfort and his own
foolishness for wanting a triumph in his old age.43 Like other moments through
his life course, when he did not fulfil the usual mos maiorum,44 Suetonius uses the
wrongness of the action for his age as a means to reveal Vespasian’s humility and
the absence of ambition from his nature. This is done through a reference back
to Vespasian’s ancestors and a statement by the emperor of their absence.45 Like
Cicero discussed above, there is a sense of achievement through actions during
his adult stage of life. Both Suetonius’ Life of Vespasian and Cicero’s published
40
Suet. Claud. 25, 28–9; see Gascou, Suétone, 739–44; Ginsburg, Representing
Agrippina, p. 35.
41
Compare Plin. Ep. 8.18 contrast to 3.1; Paneg. 4.7, 42, 83, 88.
42
Using Dio’s chronology 68.6.3; Eutr. 8.2 has Trajan born in AD 53 rather than AD
56; on the life course of Trajan see Paul Roche, ‘Pliny’s thanksgiving: an introduction to the
Panegyricus’, in Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World, ed. idem. (2011), 18–22.
43
Suet. Vesp. 12.
44
That is after assuming the toga virilis Suet. Vesp. 2.
45
Suet. Vesp. 12.
speeches make reference to bias against the man in power – whose ancestry, and
in Vespasian’s case the additional handicap of the improper pronunciation of
Latin words, did not match their elevated status. Thus, age did not disempower
Vespasian. For Suetonius, it is age that disables Galba as emperor rather than
the disability of his body.46 The prediction that he would become emperor but
not until his old age was made when he was a young boy, only to be confirmed
by portents later in his life time.47 In contrast, to Claudius, Galba’s life had been
lived in the public eye, despite his physical disability; whereas Claudius had been
hidden from the public. Galba takes on this quality of old age and combines it
with one of Claudius’ traits – being controlled by others. In Galba’s case, he was
controlled by three men living in the palace with him: Titus Vinius, Cornelius
Laco and Icelus Marcianus – recalled as his three tutors.48 Suetonius is very clear
that Galba’s unpopularity was because of his age and the specific fact that he was
a senex – a view shared by Plutarch.49 The denial of age, for this 73-year-old, was
strengthened by flattery and the soldiers’ dictum after his death: Galba Cupido,
fuaris aetate tua (Galba Cupid, exalt in your age).50 The concept that the absence
of a son made Galba unpopular with everyone is dismissed by Suetonius, it was
due to the fact that he was a senex.51 At 73 years of age, he was, see Table 1.1, at
the very end of his life course and associated with all the characteristics of the
very old.
Young emperors cannot escape the abilities and disabilities of their age,
any more than the more elderly. Suetonius alludes to the possible explanation
of Nero’s wantonness, lust, extravagance, avarice and cruelty as the follies of
youth – iuvenili errore.52 However, he makes clear that these were in fact not due
to his stage of life but were defects of his person. William Harris has shown us
how a ruler needed to restrain their anger and Augustus provides the guide to
when a ruler may exercise his anger:
• in public business: to be avoided – Augustus forgives the Alexandrians

for their opposition
• in relation to the family: is justified – Augustus physically attacks the
lover of Julia
Suet. Galba 21.

46
Suet. Galba 4 and 9.

47
48
Suet. Galba 14.
49
Suet. Galba 17 and 19; Charles Murrison, Suetonius: Galba, Otho, Vitellius (1992),
77 incorrectly seeks to explain the role of age away.
50
Suet. Galba 20.
51
Suet. Galba 17.
52
Suet. Nero 26.
• in relation to slaves: is brutal – for a trivial offence a slave is nailed to the

mast of a ship.53
With reference to all other characteristics of a person, any trait could become
a defect just as anger could.54 However, the encroachment from the private
or world of the domus (home) into the public realm is the point at which the
emperor is revealed to have a disability in Suetonius. Thus, Galba only becomes

disabled when he arrives in Rome and is revealed as an old man, who in private
is dominated by others – a trait which spills over into the public realm.
Conclusion: Disability and Age in the Early Roman Empire
The stages of life set out above and our discussion of the relationship between
age and the inability to act as emperor points to the importance of age and
ageism amongst adults in mid-life towards both the elderly and the young.
Karen Cokayne has pointed out in connection with medical writers that old
age was a form of illness from which you could not recover, just as childhood
and youth might be understood via paediatrics as a condition from which all
will recover, if they survived to adulthood and a life of virtue, and were not led
into vice.55 We can find evidence for those who lived well with their age, but
their age could determine how they were treated by others and that treatment
could limit their capacity to act (as we can see from example of Galba above).56
It is age rather than physical impairment that could disable a person, whether a
Claudius or a Galba, once in power. In addition, Claudius’ physical disability
caused him, on gaining power, to have little to no experience of holding power.57
For this additional reason, he had a disability unlike others in old age – he could
not provide the defence that he had gained experience as an adult in mid-life, as
found for example in Cicero’s Cato Maior de Senectute.58 That defence accepted
the physical incapacity of old age and the physical deterioration of the body, but
could still assert mental vitality and wisdom gained from experience. All true in
principle, but as we have seen with Galba, the old were seen to have an inability
53
Harris, Restraining Rage (2001), 245–6, based on Plut. Mor. 207C on sayings of
Augustus that reveal a need to control his anger and provides examples of the ways in which
anger caused a loss of control on the part of the princeps, even when father of his country in 2
BC as well as when a young man.
54
See Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius (1982), 152–8.
55
Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age, 34–56.
56
See examples in ibid.
57
Compare Plin. Ep. 3.1 on link between public work and capacity to act in old age.
58
Especially sections 2.4 and 18.62–66 – discussed by J.G.F. Powell, Cicero: Cato
Maior de Senectute (1988).
to act and were to be mocked by others.59 In contrast, there were Romans to be

emulated who had reached their 77th year with sight and hearing intact and
were still physically agile – these were the old to be admired.60 It should also
be noted that there was an expectation of rashness and errors on the part of
the young that needed to be separated as normative behaviour from the actions
based on character – as we saw in the case of Nero. Ultimately, adult men in mid-
life were constructed as having the positive qualities of youth and old age, which
provided a means to marginalize the young and old as less able, or even disabled,
when compared to themselves.
Table 1.1 Age divisions from Antiquity
This table, based on the divisions and terminology, described by Tim Parkin,61
illustrates the various ways different authors in Antiquity articulated the stages
of the life course. These divisions, as stated above, bore little relation to biological
ageing but were useful rhetorical devices and reflect a cultural understanding of
behaviour associated with age stages. These stages are not a reflection of all social
realities but a way of structuring the social and political world; there is a marked
congruence with the model version of the Roman political cursus honorum
(see above).62
59
See Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age, 53–6 for examples.
60
Plin. Ep. 3.1 on Spurrina.
61
Parkin, ‘Life Cycle’.
62
Harlow and Laurence, ‘Growing Up and Growing Old’.
Isidore of
Isidore of
Diogenes
Seville 1
Seville 2
Ptolemy
Laertius
Phasing Developing Adult

Solon
Varro
Philo
growth of paidion brephos puer pais (child) infantia infantia
teeth (small (infant) (child) 0–20 0–7 0–7
0–7 child) 0–4 0–15
0–7
capacity to pais (child) pais (child) pueritia pueritia

emit seed 7–14 4–14 (childhood) (childhood)
7–14 7–14 7–14
growth of meirakion meirakion adulescens adolescentia adolescentia

beard (youth) (youth) (young (youth) (youth)
14–21 14–21 14–22 adult) 14–28 14–28
15–30
increase in neaniskos neaniskos neaniskos
strength (young (young (young adult)
21–28 adult) adult) 20–40
21–28 22–41
ripeness for aner iuvenis iuventus iuventus
Adulthood
marriage (adult) (adult) (adulthood) (adulthood)
28–35 28–49 30–45 28–49 28–49
understanding
reaches full
bloom
35–42
improvement aner senior aner
of mind and (adult) (older (adult)
reasoning 41–56 person) 40–60
42–49 45–60
perfection presbutes gravitas senectus

of mind and (older (maturity) (old age)
reasoning person) 49–70 49–77
49–56 49–56
emergence of geron presbutes

Aging Adult
moderateness (old (older

56–63 person) person)
56+ 56–68
beginning of geron senex geron senectus senium

deterioration 68+ 60+ 60–80 70+ 77+
63–70
Source: Tim Parkin, ‘Life Cycle’.


Chapter 2
Infirmitas or Not? Short-statured Persons
in Ancient Greece*
Véronique Dasen
Introduction
The study of short-statured persons in Antiquity can serve as a warning to our

tendency to project a modern notion of disability1 onto past societies. When
I initiated my research on dwarfism in 1983,2 my main goal was to provide a
case study comparing the perception of physical developmental defects in two
ancient Mediterranean cultures, Egypt and Greece. Dwarfism was particularly
interesting as it was almost absent from literature but well documented in
iconography. I collected a fairly large number of visual representations which
contrasted greatly with the paucity of pictures illustrating other physical
disorders. The case study turned out to be an exception among people with
disabilities in Antiquity and did not allow for general conclusions on the status
of disabled persons in the past. Today, the notion of ‘disability’ covers a large
variety of physical limitations, more or less severe, spectacular or unnoticeable,
eased or not by special devices and experienced by people who did not form
a consistent group in the past. Physical disability as a category did not exist
in Antiquity. Having a pathological short stature meant that a person was
considered to be ‘different’ within a community, just like people with other
physical disorders, but their appearance was not regarded as a defect or an illness.
Dwarfs can be physically fit and mentally sound. They were not considered to
* I thank Alexandre Mitchell from Expressum LTD (www.expressum.eu) for revising

my English text.
1
It would be more accurate in the ancient Greek context to write ‘differently abled’
rather than ‘dis-abled’, but in the context of this chapter, I will use ‘disabled’ to ensure the
reader understands what is referred to even though as this chapter shows, the concept of
disability is a modern projection on a different ancient reality.
2
Véronique Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (1993; paperback 2013). The
term ‘dwarf ’ is used here in a generic way, for human as well as for divine short-statured
figures. The term achondroplasia would be anachronistic and inaccurate as it only refers to
one medical condition of restricted growth. In Greek, the term was nanos, which is best
translated by ‘dwarf ’.
be physically or socially impaired in Antiquity. On the contrary, their condition

carried special competences, particularly religious ones. Deified in ancient Egypt
in the form of the dwarf gods Bes and Ptah-Pataikoi, and associated with solar
rejuvenating powers, they were also well regarded in ancient Greece, especially
in the Dionysian context. Their liminality was conveyed by their association
with childhood, animality and ethnic otherness expressed, for example, in the
Greek myth of Pygmies fighting cranes on the banks of the river Ocean. Little,
however, could be deduced about their status in daily life.
Thirty years later, the results of the investigation can be revisited in the light
of new evidence. The development of the history of the body since the 1990s,
as well as of Disability Studies,3 have also introduced useful concepts. The
notions of ‘social’ or ‘community model’, and more recently of ‘abledeism’ versus
‘abledness’, focus on the social perception and construction of disability.4 In The
Staff of Oedipus (2003), Martha L. Rose highlighted how expectations of ‘able-
bodiedness’ and hope for rehabilitation varied from one society to the other.5
She argued convincingly that the sparseness of information about disabled
persons and the absence of a clear standard for the disposal of malformed
infants in ancient Greece suggest a high level of tolerance in a time with no
clear dichotomy between ability and disability. Many persons suffered from
congenital or acquired physical defects in all classes of society. The Ancients
were aware that the ‘ideal man’ was a fallacy. In a discussion with the painter
Parrhasios, Socrates advised him to look for several individuals and not just
a single one as a model: ‘And further, when you copy types of beauty, it is so
difficult to find a perfect model that you combine the most beautiful details of
several, and thus contrive to make the whole look beautiful’.6
3
See the Society for Disability Studies (SDS), founded in 1982 as the Section for the
Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability (SSCIID), and renamed the Society for
Disability Studies in 1986, with the Disability Studies Quarterly and annual events: https://
www.disstudies.org.
4
See also the ‘Introduction’, 2–5, and Bianca Frohne’s chapter in this volume.
5
Martha L. Rose, The Staff of Oedipus (2003). Cf. the similar conclusions of Martin
Schmidt, ‘Hephaistos lebt: Untersuchungen zur Frage der Behandlung behinderter Kinder
in der Antike’, Hephaistos 5–6 (1983–84): 133–61. On Antiquity, see also Johannes Stahl,
‘Physically Deformed and Disabled People’, in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in
the Roman World, ed. Michael Peachin (2011); Christian Laes, ‘Raising a Disabled Child’, in
The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World, eds Judith Evans
Grubbs and Tim Parkin, with Roslynne Bell (2013).
6
Xenophon, Memorabilia, 3.10, 2 (trans. E.C. Marchant, LCL). On the notion of
beauty/ugliness and its relation with ancient physiognomy, Ingomar Weiler, ‘Inverted
kalokagathia’, in Representing the Body of the Slave, eds Jane F. Gardner and Thomas
J. Wiedemann (2002) 11–28; Francis Prost and Jérôme Wilgaux, eds, Penser et représenter
le corps dans l’Antiquité (2006); Simon Swain, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, Polemon’s
Infirmitas or Not? 31
Ancient families and communities included many people with a wide

range of physical impairments who were not dependent economically or
segregated. The study of human remains has confirmed in many cases that care
was provided to persons afflicted by severe developmental defects, especially
among the elite.7 However, this does not imply that all participated in social
activities like others. Three aspects must be considered, the extent of the physical
impairment, its construction as a disability and its social consequences within a

specific community.8
Dwarfs in Athens
Ancient Medical Views
Did ancient authors conceptualize dwarfism as a category? In the few extant

medical and biological treatises on the topic, individuals with this condition
constitute a group defined by the criteria of proportions between the parts of the
body, which also defined beauty in ancient art. Two terms, pygmaios and nanos are
applied for mythical as well as for real short-statured persons. Pygmaios is the most
ancient word of the two. In the Iliad, it designates a population of hostile little
men, living at the end of the inhabited world, on the banks of the river Ocean,
who must each year repel the attacks of migrating cranes.9 The name derives from
Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (2007); Véronique Dasen and Jérôme
Wilgaux, eds, Langages et métaphores du corps dans l’Antiquité (2008).
7
See e.g. the case studies in Valérie Delattre and Ryadh Sallem, eds, Décrypter la différence:
lecture archéologique et historique de la place des personnes handicapées dans les communautés
du passé (2009); Sandra Lösch, Stefanie Panzer and Andreas G. Nerlich, ‘Cerebral Paralysis
in an Ancient Egyptian Female Mummy from a 13th Dynasty Tomb – Palaeopathological
and Radiological Investigations’, in Behinderungen und Beeinträchtigungen/Disability and
Impairment in Antiquity, ed. R. Breitwieser (2012) 37–40; Charlotte A. Roberts, ‘Did they
Take Sugar: the Use of Skeletal Evidence in the Study of Disability in Past Populations’, in
Madness, Disability and Social Exclusion: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Difference, ed.
J. Hubert (2010), 46–59.
8
Gary L. Albrecht, Katherine D. Seelman and Michael Bury, eds, Handbook of
Disability Studies (2001), 11–13; Günther Cloerkes, Soziologie der Behinderten: eine
Einführung (2001), 4–5. On historicizing the notion of disability, see also Henri-Jacques
Stiker, Corps infirmes et sociétés. Essais d’anthropologie historique (2005). Matthew Wappett
and Katrina Arndt, eds, Foundations of Disability Studies (2013) and Matthew Wappett and
Katrina Arndt, eds, Emerging Perspectives on Disability Studies (2013).
9
On the various traditions locating them in Africa, at the sources of the Nile, in India or
other remote countries, Dasen, Dwarfs, 175–88; ead., ‘Pygmaioi’, in Lexicon Iconographicum
Mythologiae Classicae VII (1994), 594–601, pls. 466–86; ead., Supplementum I (2009), I,
440–43, II, pls. 211–13.
pygme, ‘the fist’, a measure of length of about 35 cm, which suggests that their
essential feature was a striking shortness, associated with a bellicose temper.
Aristotle discusses the place of dwarfs, called pygmaioi or nanoi in his biological
treatises. In his scala naturae, the notions of ‘valuable’, timion, and ‘divine’,
theion, are associated with proportions between the parts of the body.10 Dwarfs,
characterized by upper bodily weight, are used to illustrate his theory. In the Parts
of Animals, Aristotle describes a nanos as a person with an overlarge upper body,

‘big in the trunk, or the portion from the head to the residual vent’, and a small
lower part, ‘where the weight is supported and where locomotion is affected’.11 He
associates them with children, because ‘all children are dwarfs’, and crawl instead
of walking because of their large heads and frail lower limbs.12 This upper bodily
weight causes several metabolic disorders; an oversized head hampers reasoning
and memory. Like children, dwarfs also need much sleep; the warmth provided by
food is cooled by their large upper parts, and the resultant cold return flow paralyses
their system for a longer time than usual, inducing deep sleep.13 In the History of
Animals, Aristotle adds that dwarfs have an abnormally large phallus, like small
mules (ginnoi).14 Only in Problems, a late compilation of Aristotelian treatises,
does the author distinguish between two types of dwarfs: disproportionate, who
‘have limbs of children’, and proportionate, ‘small as a whole’, who look like human
miniatures.15 He attributes the disorder to a lack of place or to a disease during
gestation.16 Aristotle adds that the condition may also be due to a lack of food
or space during early infancy; he illustrates this theory by describing how some
people ‘try to reduce the size of animals after birth, for instance by bringing up
puppies in quail cages’, where their limbs progressively crush and bend.17
10
Andrew Coles, ‘Animal and Childhood Cognition in Aristotle’s Biology and
the Scala Naturae’, in Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse. Akten des
Symposions über Aristoteles’ Biologie vom 24.–28. Juli 1995 in der Werner-Reimers-Stiftung
in Bad Homburg, eds Wolfgang Kullmann and Sabine Föllinger (1997), 287–323, esp.
299–310.
11
Parts of Animals 4.10.686b, 1–20, trans. A.L. Peck, LCL.
12
Cf. Véronique Dasen, ‘“All Children are Dwarfs”. Medical Discourse and Iconography
of Children’s Bodies’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 27 (2008): 49–62.
13
Parva Naturalia, On Memory and Recollection 453 a–b; On Sleep and Waking 457a.
14
History of Animals 6.24.577b.
15
Problems 10.12.892a.
16
Generation of Animals 2.8.749a (the cause is the quality of the sperm); History of
Animals 6.24.577b (restricted growth is due an unspecified disease, nosema).
17
Problems 10.12.892a. Cf. Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 44.5, claims that human
dwarfs were produced by keeping children in boxes in order to stunt their growth, which
suggests that the practice could be envisaged. On the Roman market for deformed slaves, see
e.g. Robert Garland, The Eye of the Beholder. Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman
World (1995), 47; Weiler, ‘Inverted kalokagathia’, 23.
The view of Aristotle is thus mainly negative. Dwarfs and children form an
inferior category of beings, close to animals, because they have disproportionate
bodies causing deficient physical and mental capacities. Intellectual deficiencies
may be counterbalanced by other qualities called dunamis by the author: ‘Even
among humans beings, children, when compared with adults, and dwarf adults,
when compared with others, may have some characteristics in which they are
superior, but in noun (intelligence), at any rate, they are inferior’.18

Apart from Aristotle, only the Hippocratic treatise On Generation (late fifth
century BC), describes how a child is born leptos (with a small size), asthenes
(weak) or anaperos (crippled).19 These vague terms could also apply to restricted
growth. Disorders originate during gestation because the womb is too narrow,
or does not close well, and lacks sufficient nutriment for the child. The process is
compared with the development of a cucumber placed in a vessel: the plant takes
the shape and the size of its container during its growth.
Dwarfs do not occur in medical texts of later periods. The silence may be due
to the condition’s rarity and high mortality,20 or to the fact that the condition
was not regarded as a disease, and did require special medical care. This latter
option is confirmed by its absence in votive inscriptions. In the sanctuary of
Asclepius in Epidaurus, for example, no extant inscription refers to problems
associated with restricted growth.21
Dwarfs in Attic Vase-Painting
The paucity of literary evidence is compensated in part by iconography. Most

representations of dwarfs appear in Attic red-figure vase-painting of the second
half of the fifth century BC. The pictures bear witness to the development of
new drawing techniques associated with an increasing interest in the rendering
of anatomical details and individuality. Most dwarfs are characterized by the
features described by Aristotle: a significant short stature associated with
attributes of adulthood, such as a beard and a mature phallus, and a marked
disproportion between the large head and the short, bent limbs. Painters seem to
have enjoyed depicting their unusual anatomy, accentuating their resemblances
with satyrs, the half-human, half-beast companions of Dionysos, who share
18
Parts of Animals 4.10.686b 23–7 (trans. Peck).
19
On Generation 9–11.
20
Mirko D. Grmek, Les maladies à l’aube de la civilisation occidentale (1983), 21–30.
21
Nicholas Vlahogiannis, ‘Curing Disability’, in Health in Antiquity, ed. H. King
(2005); Clarisse Prêtre and Philippe Charlier, Maladies humaines, thérapies divines: analyse
épigraphique et paléopathologique de textes de guérison grecs (2009). Similarly, anatomical
votive offerings do not show curved limbs or signs of stunted growth; cf. Nicholas Chr.
Stampolidis and Yorgos Tasoulas (eds), Health and Illness in Ancient Greece (2014).
common physical features, such as a depressed nasal bridge, a bushy beard and
eyebrows, thick lips, an overly large phallus and a shameless behaviour.
Images of dwarfs represent an exception in the iconographic repertory of the
classical period that generally avoids the depiction of physical deformities. The
series thus indicates that the condition was not regarded as a physical blemish
with disquieting connotations, such as the expression of divine anger, but as
a tolerable, and even positive, anomaly. Unlike maimed individuals, dwarfs

were small, but physically fit and ‘whole in body’.22 Their integration was also
promoted by another factor. Like other growth disorders, dwarfism is usually not
identifiable at birth. A physical difference becomes apparent only progressively
when the growth retardation becomes obvious, at two or three years old. No
Greek law deprived a person from citizen rights because of an unusual physical
appearance, and hence a dwarf born from Athenian parents could be a full
member of the polis. Their civic status thus depended first on the social position
of their family. Physical perfection was compulsory only for some religious
magistracies, such as the office of archôn basileus (king magistrate), requiring
dokimasia (physical examination).23
For a long period, scholars who believed in the purity of Greek art dismissed
these images as caricatures. The limit between caricature and portrait may indeed
be thin in certain circumstances. Representations of overly large heads attached
to meagre bodies may be influenced by theatrical stock figures.24 Depictions
of achondroplasia, the most common type of short-limbed dwarfism, however,
can be securely identified. Many pictures reproduce with great care the main
manifestations of their physical malformation, without being disrespectful: a
long muscular trunk, thick thighs with folds of skin below the buttocks and short
legs, especially the tibia (see Figures 2.1, 2.7 and 2.8). The head shows typical
facial malformations: a depression at the root of the nose, a bulging forehead,
enhanced by incipient baldness, thick lips and a strong lower jaw revealed by
sparse side-whiskers spread along the cheeks (see Figure 2.2). Enlarged genitals
are the only physical distortion.
The rarity of the disorder (1 in ca 10,000 live births) may suggest that a
series of pictures render the features of the same person living in mid-fifth
century Athens, a man characterized by a special hairstyle, side-whiskers and a
balding head (see Figures 2.2 and 2.8). More likely, this hairstyle was used as a
On the notion of holokleria, Jérôme Wilgaux, ‘Hugiês kai holoklaros. Le corps du

22
prêtre en Grèce ancienne’, in La norme en matière religieuse en Grèce ancienne, ed. P. Brulé
(2009), 231–42.
23
Wilgaux, ibid.
24
See e.g. Wolgang Binsfeld, Grylloi. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Karikatur
(1956). On caricature, see Alexandre G. Mitchell, Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of
Visual Humour (2009), esp. 235–48; Patrizia Birchler Emery, L’iconographie de la vieillesse en
Grèce archaïque. Une contribution à l’étude du grand âge dans l’Antiquité (2010), 219–31.
pictorial convention enhancing the otherness of the dwarf as it also characterizes

foreigners in attic iconography.25
I will discuss here two contexts, first the banquet, second the household,
as they both reveal the main roles reserved to dwarfs in Athens. A preliminary
observation is that dwarf women are hardly shown;26 mostly men appear in urban
and domestic spaces in the company of full-sized Athenians, men and women.
In a number of more detailed pictures, some dwarfs seem to have subordinate

positions in wealthy households, though some of their attributes suggest a free
birth status, such as walking sticks.27 Not only their physical anomaly was not
concealed, but they were usually depicted naked, which implies that dwarfs
were a pleasant sight and sought out for their rarity. Positive associations are
evidenced by their integration in the thiasos of Dionysos, though associated
with satyrs’ liminality.
Dwarfs at the Banquet
Most depictions show dwarfs dancing at banquets. Their performances may

derive from the archaic tradition studied by Burkhard Fehr of akletoi (‘uninvited
guests’), beggars crashing banquets and ridiculing themselves for the pleasure of
aristocratic guests.28 Ancient sources allude to their obscene behaviour inciting
people to laugh and to offer them a meal, comforting the hosts in their own
feeling of superiority. Literary sources do not mention akletoi in the new social
order of the fifth century, but there are various mentions of hiring professional
jugglers, singers and dancers, such as the troop owned by a Syracusan described
by Xenophon in the first quarter of the fourth century BCE.29 Inviting dwarf
dancers and musicians to elitist boisterous parties is well documented in
Hellenistic and Roman art and literature where clownish dwarfs are portrayed
earning a living from their anomalous body. In The Lapiths (ca 170 CE), Lucian
of Samosata thus describes the well-named Satyrion, a gelotopoios (lit. ‘joke-
maker’), at a banquet: ‘So in came a small ugly, amorphous (lit. “shapeless”),
25
See e.g. Birchler Emery, L’iconographie de la vieillesse, 213–19, on the baldness of
dwarfs, compared with that of silens and centaurs, 231–57.
26
A possible dwarf woman is depicted on a skyphos in Munich, Antiken sammlungen
8934; Dasen, Dwarfs, 223–4, G 16, pl. 51; BA 4691.
27
On the stick as attribute of male citizens, see Pierre Brulé, ‘Bâtons et bâton du mâle,
adulte, citoyen’, in L’expression des corps. Gestes, attitudes, regards dans l’iconographie antique,
eds Lydie Bodiou, Dominique Frère and Véronique Mehl (2006), 75–84.
28
Burkhard Fehr, ‘Entertainers at the Symposion: the akletoi in the Archaic Period’,
in Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposium, ed. O. Murray (1990), 185–95. Cf. Lucas
Giuliani, ‘Die seligen Krüppel. Zur Deutung von Missgestalten in der hellenistischen
Kleinkunst’, Archäologischer Anzeiger 102 (1987): 701–21.
29
Xenophon, Symposium, 2.1, 8, 11, 14.
fellow with a shaven head, just a few hairs standing upright on the crown. He
danced with dislocations and contortions, which made him still more absurd,
then improvised and delivered some verses with an Egyptian accent’.30 The
performance ends with a burlesque scuffle between Satyrion, anthropiskos (lit.
‘tiny man’), and Alcidamas, a guest.
Did such performers exist in earlier periods? On sixth and fifth centuries
BCE Attic vase-paintings, depictions of dancing dwarfs are ambiguous. Some

dwarfs dance alone, others in pairs.31 Do they depict short-statured citizens
participating for the komos (‘drunken procession’), or professionals entertaining
a drinking party? Two new documents have appeared since 1993 that associate a
dwarf with full-sized banqueters, allowing us to revisit their ambiguous position.
The first one is a wine jug attributed to the Niobid Painter, now in New York.32
A naked dwarf dances before a reveller, playing a barbitos (lyre), crowned with
ivy and carrying a jug on his shoulder, on his way to the drinking party; he wears
high leather turned-up boots, an attire similar to that of the so-called Anacreontic
musicians (see Figure 2.1). The painter carefully observed the anatomy of the
short-sized man performing vigorously before the musician, enhancing features
common with satyrs: his head shown in profile displays a bulging and wrinkled
overhead, a snub-nose, tousled hair and a shaggy beard. The rest of his body
is shown frontally, with spread-eagled legs, as he exhibits provocatively a large
penis. His rhythmic gestures, one fist closed, the other arm extended, recalls
the animated dances of satyrs and comic actors.33 His pugnacious movements
could also mimic a boxing match at the end of his performance, as in Lucian
of Samosata’s passage above. Hellenistic dwarfs, like the bronze group of three
dancers with contorted attitudes found in the Mahdia shipwreck near Tunisia,
perform with similar contorted attitudes.34 He dances like an entertainer, but
was he a freeborn citizen or a slave?
The Lapiths 18–19.

30
Pairs: Dasen, Dwarfs, G 3, pl. 42 (skyphos, Paris, Louvre G 617); G 15, pl. 50 (cup,
31
Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1984.456); G 20, pl. 53 (cup, Todi, Museo
Civico 471); G 22, pl. 54 (skyphos, Yale University, R. Darlington Stoddard 1913.160).
32
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Nelson Bunker Hunt, 1982.474.
33
See e.g. the satyrs dancing with aulos and barbitos on a krater in Bonn 78;
F. Lissarrague, La cité des satyres. Une anthropologie ludique (Athènes, VIe–Ve siècles avant
J.–C.) (2013), 154–5, Figure 127; BA 206751. Actor: krater, Naples 81673 (Pronomos
Painter); Lissarrague, ibid. 30–31, Figure 7; BA 217500.
34
For recent studies on the Mahdia dwarfs, see Susanne Pfisterer-Haas, ‘Die bronzenen
Zwergentänzer’, in Das Wrack. Der antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia, I, ed. Gisela Hellenkemper
Salies et al. (1994), 483–504; Sandro de Maria, ‘Un bronzetto da Bakchias (Fayyum) e la serie
dei nani danzanti ellenistici’, OCNUS 7 (1999): 45–68. On dwarf musicians and performers
in Hellenistic and Roman times, Michael Garmaise, Studies in the Representation of Dwarfs
in Hellenistic and Roman Art (1998); Véronique Dasen, ‘Des artistes différents? Nains
The scene is a reminder of the affinities between dwarfs and satyrs. Both
beings are often depicted as infringing on behavioural norms.35 On a fragmentary
stamnos by the Peleus Painter (see Figure 2.2),36 a dwarf dances on what must be
a table, based on the height of the musicians surrounding him, playing the flute
and castanets. Ivy branches wrapped around his neck and his raised arm indicate
a Dionysian context. A name, Hippokleides, is painted above his head. It refers to
a dancer, famous for his insolent celebration of the pleasure of dancing, recalling
the shameless performances of akletoi. Herodotus explains how Cleisthenes,
tyrant of Sicyon (665–565 BCE), invited all deserving suitors of his daughter to
Sicyon to test them as potential son-in-laws. An Athenian, Hippokleides, was in
favour, but his behaviour at the end of the dinner ruined his chances. He called
to the flute-player, and began dancing on a table with his legs up in the air. ‘You
have danced yourself out of your marriage’, said Cleisthenes. ‘Hippokleides does
not care’, replied the dancer. Herodotus adds that this reply became a famous
proverb. The name Hippokleides was perhaps added by the painter to allude
to this famous anecdote or it may have been the professional pseudonym of a
dwarf artist.
In the tondo of a cup in Todi,37 two dwarfs perform similar uninhibited
acrobatic movements on a three-legged dining table, transgressing Greek
manners. One walks on all fours, holding a cup in his hand, while his companion
stands on his hands and shakes his legs in the air.
The affinities between dwarfs and satyrs extend beyond their similar physical
features and comic behaviour. Several scenes show them performing before
Dionysos, substituting for satyrs, as if their physical anomaly granted entry
without further transformation into the god’s supernatural world. On a privately
owned krater, a dwarf dances on a table, holding a tympanon (see Figure 2.3).38 At
his right, a maenad accompanies him with the flute, while at his left a thoughtful
satyr and Dionysos himself, leaning on his thyrsos, gaze at his performance. All
three are crowned with ivy, and a branch hangs above the dwarf to emphasize the
Dionysian context. The satyr and the maenad refer to real humans transported
into the mythical thiasos through the ritual performance. Only the dwarf has no
supernatural characteristics, such as a tail or animal ears. He appears to be the
human counterpart of a satyr.
When dwarfs interact with women on vases they sometimes also behave as
satyrs. On a wine jug by the Phiale Painter, a dwarf dances towards a muffled
danseurs et musiciens dans le monde hellénistique et romain’, in Le statut du musicien dans
la Méditerranée ancienne: Égypte, Mésopotamie, Grèce et Rome, ed. Sibylle Emerit (2013),
259–77.
35
For an extensive study of this topsy-turvy world, see Lissarrague, La cité des satyres.
36
Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität I 707; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 9, pl. 47, 1.
37
Todi, Museo Civico 471; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 20, pl. 53.
38
Zurich market; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 23; pl. 55, 1.
female partner like a lascivious demon, perhaps in a ritual festive context (see
Figure 2.4).39 His hopping step with outstretched arms imitates the unsuccessful
gesticulations of satyrs attempting to catch a maenad. The painter symbolized
this sexual pursuit by depicting a phallus with wings flying towards the woman.
The attitude of the woman, stooping forward on an outstretched leg, her weight
resting on the other flexed foot, does not evoke fear, but rather the usual dancing
step performed by maenads with satyrs. The ambiguous position of dwarfs is

evidenced on two vases depicting bearded miniature satyrs; the viewer is hard-
pressed to decide whether they are satyr children or satyr dwarfs.40
Looking and behaving like a satyr does not imply being a social outcast.
Another new scene is depicted on a column krater once auctioned in the
London market (see Figure 2.5).41 This time a dwarf is part of a group of revellers
who may be leaving the symposion after having drunk too heavily. On the left,
a man holds a torch, indicating that the group is walking late at night. On the
right, another reveller holds a cup used at drinking parties. In between them, a
dwarf walks beside a musician playing the kithara who seems to vacillate. Is the
dwarf an attendant, holding the musician’s walking stick, or yet another reveller,
helping a companion whilst carrying his own staff ? No derogatory treatment in
the scene enables us to choose definitively one or the other interpretation. His
size aside, the only difference between the dwarf and the other revellers is that he
wears a festive floral crown, unlike the full-sized men wearing large headbands.
Dwarfs in the Household
According to Timaeus of Tauromenium, the Sybarites employed costly dwarf

attendants. For Athenaeus (second century CE), this custom was part of the
truphê (‘luxurious lifestyle’) that caused the ruin of the town in 445 BCE:
‘Another national custom arising from their luxurious habits was to keep tiny
manikins, anthroparia mikra, and owlish jesters, skopaioi […] also Maltese lap-
dogs, which accompany them even to the gymnasia’ and ‘took delight in Melitê
puppies and human beings who were less than human’.42
Some short-statured persons seem to have been looked for as luxurious
attendant in Athens too. The tondo of a cup from the Athenian Agora depicts
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1971.866; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 18; pl. 52; BA 4692.
39
E.g. Dasen, Dwarfs, pl. 40, 1 and 2; Lissarrague, La cité des satyres, 63–6, esp. Figure
40
39.
London market; Sotheby’s 14.12.1995, no 140; Mitchell, Greek Vase-Painting, 238,
41
note 12.
42
Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 12.518e. On the construction of this topos, Robert
J. Gorman and Vanessa B. Gorman, ‘The Tryphê of the Sybarites: a Historiographical
Problem in Athenaeus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 127 (2007): 38–60, esp. 53.
a small man standing beside a seated woman (see Figures 2.6a and 2.6b). 43 The
woman is shown as a wealthy, seductive hetaira (high class courtesan), dressed in
a thin chiton made of transparent fabric, revealing a breast, wearing bracelets on
each wrist and holding a mirror. She is seated on an elegant klismos chair, her feet
resting on a footstool. They are in her bedroom, near an elaborately decorated
couch with a thick, comfortable pillow. The small man, characterized by very
slender limbs, is dressed in himation and leans on a walking stick, an accessory

denoting his freeborn status. His large and elongated head hardly reaches the
seat of the woman beside him. A moustache, painted in diluted glaze, clearly
indicates that he is an adult. Both figures may represent professional entertainers
performing at drinking parties where the cup bearing their depiction was used.
The veil covering the woman’s hair resembles that worn by a flute-player on a
krater in Copenhagen, whereas a festal garland crowning the head of the dwarf
alludes to festive activities.
Dwarfs appear in other domestic contexts too. A small ointment aryballos
by the Clinic Painter (see Figures 2.7a and 2.7b) presents the most ancient
depiction of a Greek clinic indicated by three cupping devices hanging on the
wall.44 The painting was most likely made to order for a self-conscious young
doctor carefully depicted with a nascent beard. The practitioner is shown seated
before a standing patient, probably bloodletting him over a basin. The whole
scene serves as an advertisement of his excellent reputation: the clinic is full of
men waiting, all with bandages on the arm or the leg identifying them as patients
under regular treatment, and alluding to the practitioner’s skill, who knew the
complex art of bandaging.45 A successful doctor is prosperous, as evidenced by a
few luxurious pieces of furniture, the elegant klismos chair and the bronze basin
with leonine feet. On the reverse, a naked dwarf adds another costly touch to the
scene. He is a free man, as suggested by his sex, with tied foreskin, acting as an
assistant, perhaps collecting gifts, here a hare, brought by one of the patients. He
served as a living advertisement for a doctor in search of fame. He was possibly
also appreciated in a clinic for the association of dwarfism with healing and evil
averting power well evidenced in Late Period Egypt (664–332 BCE). On top
of the vessel, two Erotes fly with vegetal crowns identifying the doctor with the
winner of a competition, here against disease.
43
Athens, Agora Museum P 2574; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 13, pl. 49.
44
Paris, Louvre CA 2183; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 5, pl. 44; BA 210078; Helen King and
Véronique Dasen, La Médecine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine (2008), 99–101, Figure 8.
45
In the Hippocratic treatises, the art of bandaging demonstrates the skill of the doctor;
e.g. On Joints, passim; J. Jouanna, Hippocrate (1992), 136–40. Cf. the famous red-figure cup
by Sosias with Achilles bandaging Patroclus (550–500 BCE); Berlin, Antikensammlung:
F2278; BA 200108.
In a series of vase-paintings, a dwarf is substituted to the expected slave.46 He

is depicted carrying a basket on top of his head behind a woman going out.47
Others accompany upper-class children, instead of the pedagogue, usually an
old trustworthy slave, as on a cup in Ferrara.48 On an attic pelike by the Dwarf
Painter,49 a dwarf walks with a knotty stick, leading by the collar an imposing
Mastiff dog with grinning teeth, whilst escorting two boys (see Figure 2.8). His
beard, moustache and side-whiskers show that he is older than his companions,
which suggests that he acts as their guard. His nakedness, with conspicuously
large genitals unlike the Greek canon of male beauty, contrasts with the boys’
clothing. William G. Thalman notes that the opposition between the youth and
the dwarf is highlighted by the fact that they look in opposite directions.50 For
J. Michael Padgett, the figure can only be a slave and a foreigner.51 However, one
cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that the dwarf is the owner of the dog,
joining the group of young men to the palaestra.
Physical Otherness and Exoticism
The ambivalent perception of physical otherness is expressed on the mythical

level in the burlesque figure between the Pygmies and the crane.52 These liminal
46
On the characterization of slaves in iconography, stigmatized by demeaning physical
features and subaltern occupation (though free workers are difficult to distinguish from
slaves): Thalman, ibid. (with earlier bibliography). See also Jean-François Girardot, ‘Cherchez
l’esclave! Ou quelques réflexions sur les documents figurés de l’archaïsme et du classicisme
grec’, Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 15 (1989): 399–433.
47
Agrigento, Museo civico, ex Giudice 45; Dasen, Dwarfs, 228, G 6, pl. 45.
48
Ferrara, Museo Nazionale 20363; Dasen, Dwarfs, 226, G 7, pl. 46,1.
49
Boston, MFA 76.45; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 8, pl. 46; BA 214151.
50
See the discussion by William G. Thalman, ‘Greek Representations of the Slave
Body: A Conflict of Ideas?’, in Reading Ancient Slavery, eds Richard Alston, Edith Hall and
Laura Proffitt (2011), 76–8, Figure 4.1.
51
J. Michael Padgett, ‘The Stable hands of Dionysus: Satyrs and Donkeys as Symbols
of Social Marginalization in Attic Vase Painting’, in Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the
Construction of the Other in Greek Art, ed. Beith Cohen (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2000),
47–8, Figure 2.1 ‘Everything about the dwarf – size, nakedness, deformity, subordinate
position – emphasises his social inferiority. In fact, he is almost certainly a slave, whose
foreign origin, physical deformity, and status as property make him the ultimate Other’.
52
See Dominique Lenfant, ‘Monsters in Greek Ethnography and Society in the Fifth
and Fourth centuries BCE’, in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek
Thought, ed. R. Buxton (1999), 199–214; Brian Sparkes, ‘Small World: Pygmies and Co.’,
in Word and Image in Ancient Greece, eds N. Keith Rutter and Brian A. Sparkes (2000),
79–98; Maurizio Harari, ‘A Short History of Pygmies in Greece and Italy’, in Greek Identity
in the Western Mediterranean, Papers in Honour of Brian Shefton, ed. Kathryn Lomas (2004),
characters ridicule heroic norms of epic battle; this use of parody reveals the
ambiguous perception of real dwarfs, constantly oscillating between the realms
of children and satyrs.
The earliest depictions date back to the archaic period. On the famous
Francois vase dating to the beginning of the sixth century BCE, the fight of
the Pygmies is placed at the bottom of the vase, symbolizing the far end of the
world. They are only characterized by an extreme shortness. They have no ethnic
traits or signs of dwarfism: they are proportionally reduced, and ride rams or
ostriches, which is how we know that they are short-statured characters. They
fight energetically against cranes, wielding various weapons, clubs, swings and
curved sticks, lagobola, in a dignified way. However, unlike the fierce Greek
heroes depicted in the top register of the vase, killing the monstruous Calydonian
boar, Pygmies fall before tall birds.
In the classical period, about a century later, pathological features are used
instead of the ethnical characteristics of African pygmies. Greek painters depict
pygmies as achondroplastic dwarfs. On an attic lekythos (see Figure 2.9), a
pygmy exhibits a large head, with snub nose, thick thighs, protruding buttocks
and belly and conspicuous genitals. He swings a club before a tall, thin crane.
The elegance and the immobility of the bird contrast humorously with the
vain gesticulation of the little man, plump like a child. The picture also makes
a humorous reference to the deeds of Heracles, the champion of real monsters,
with similar pose and weapon. An exotic attire sometimes enhances the dwarf ’s
otherness, like the Skythian hat of the pygmy on a rhyton in St Petersburg.53
Negroid features, such as woolly hair, are sometimes shown, as on a fragmentary
rhyton in Moscow, but this is a rare occurrence.54
Why replace a pygmy by a pathological dwarf ? In this period Greeks knew
how to characterize black people.55 Most likely, ancient Athenians never saw
a real pygmy, but they could observe their short compatriots who served as
models. These pictures may also express deeper feelings; maybe the need to
decrease the singularity of dwarfs by transforming them into a legendary race of
feeble creatures living far away, their physical anomaly became less disturbing. It
could be discussed, but on a mythical level. The case of Pygmies is not unique.
Other genetic anomalies are described as anomalous races in ancient texts,
163–90; Véronique Dasen, ‘Nains et pygmées. Figures de l’altérité en Egypte et Grèce

anciennes’, in Penser et représenter le corps dans l’Antiquité, eds J. Wilgaux and F. Prost (2006),
95–113.
53
Rhyton, St Petersburg, Hermitage b 1818; Dasen, Dwarfs, G 60, pl. 62; ead., LIMC
no. 8, pl. 469.
54
Rhyton, fr. Moscow, Pushkin Museum M-741; Sparkes, ‘Small World’, 94, Figure 5.6;
Dasen, LIMC Supplementum, add. 9, pl. 212.
55
Cf. Frank M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity. Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman
Experience (1970).
such as albinism. In vase-painting, the myth of the Cercopes displays a stronger

notion of outcast, social this time; these famous thieves are often depicted as
dwarfs, behaving badly, stealing Heracles’ weapons.56
Conclusion
Iconography does not provide concrete answers about the life of short-statured
persons in ancient Athens, but visual conventions allow us to access mental
representations and categories of thought. The ambivalences of Aristotle’s
discourse combining dwarfs with children and animals are reflected in myth and
iconography, associating them with satyrs and exotic people.57
New evidence confirms that dwarfs formed a social group with a paradoxical
position in the Greek polis. Dwarfism was not perceived as a blemish, or as a
(modern) disability. It was a physical deviation to the norm, as Aristotle defines
it, a ‘different-ability’. Whereas children grow and become proportionate,
the otherness of dwarfs is permanent. However, far from being outcasts and
stigmatized, short-statured persons were appreciated because of their physical
appearance. Unlike the akletoi of the archaic period, they do not seem to have
an undignified role. Most of them are presented as freeborn men, with the status
of costly attendants and professional entertainers in wealthy households. Their
comic behaviour, often enhanced by shameless body language, takes place in
festive contexts that shaped Athenian social life. They participated in the polis
thanks to their integration in the Dionysian thiasos. Like satyrs, they stood
between two worlds, human and divine, experimenting the limits of human
nature, and reflecting in a burlesque way the norms of the polis.58
Dasen, Dwarfs, 188–94.

56
On the scientific categorisation reflecting folk beliefs, see Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd,
57
Science, Folklore and Ideology. Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (1983).
58
Ingomar Weiler, ‘Hic audax subit ordo pumiliorum (Statius, Silvae, 1, 6, 57),
Überlegungen zu Zwergen und Behinderten in der antiken Unterhaltungskultur’, in Soziale
Randgruppen und Aussenseiter im Altertum, ed. Ingomar Weiler (Graz: Leykam, 1988)
121–45; Herbert Grassl, ‘Behinderte in der Antike. Bemerkungen zur sozialen Stellung und
Integration’, Tyche 1 (1986): 118–26.
Figure 2.1 Oinochoe, New York, MMA, Niobid Painter. Author’s drawing
Figure 2.2 Stamnos (fragment), Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität

I 707. Author’s drawing
Figure 2.3 Krater, auctioned in Zurich market. After Arete, Galerie für Antike
Kunst, Griechische Schale und Vasen, Liste 20, n.d., no. 37
Figure 2.4 Oinochoe, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1971.866. Author’s

drawing
Figure 2.5 Column krater, auctioned in London. After Sotheby’s 14.12.1995,

no. 140
Figure 2.6a Cup, Athens, Agora Museum P 2574. Reproduced by courtesy Figure 2.6b Cup, Athens, Agora Museum
of The American School of Classical Studies at Athens: Agora P 2574. Detail: Author’s drawing
Excavations
Figure 2.7a Aryballos, Paris, Louvre CA 2183

Source: After Edmond Pottier, ‘Une clinique grecque au Ve siècle (Vase attique de la collection Peytel)’, Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène
Piot 13 (1906): pl. XIII.
Figure 2.7b Aryballos, Paris, Louvre CA 2183 Figure 2.8 Pelike, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 76.54.
e Author’s drawing
Source: After Edmond Pottier, ‘Une clinique grecque au V siècle (Vase
attique de la collection Peytel)’, Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation
Eugène Piot 13 (1906): pl. XIII. Detail: Author’s drawing.
Figure 2.9 Lekythos, Paris, Louvre TH 16. Author’s drawing


Chapter 3
Performing Dis/ability?
Constructions of ‘Infirmity’ in Late
Medieval and Early Modern Life Writing
Bianca Frohne
Introduction
According to his autobiography, intense pain, the loss of eyesight and the
disfigurement of his face are among the first memorable experiences of Johann
von Soest (1448–1506), a writer, physician and musician born in Unna,
Westphalia. His life had been characterized from the start by misery and
suffering, or at least so he tells us, thereby evoking the conditio humana he shared
with his audience.1 Interestingly, the position of this pre-modern narrator is
also the starting point of a recent field of research: many scholars in the field of
disability history share this notion of a fragile human existence that is generally
marked by phases of vulnerability, even if these are not automatically associated
with suffering or misery. Against this backdrop I refer to ‘infirmity’ not as a
biological or physiological factor, but as a cultural concept that is fundamentally
based on the opinion that the human body is a non-static, changeable entity,
and that all human bodies are prone to weakness, disintegration and deficiency.2
In this chapter I am going to ask whether ‘infirmity’ could be employed as a
significant category in pre-modern life writing. First I take a look at German
autobiographical accounts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that relate
to experiences of ‘infirmity’; in a second step I ask whether biographical accounts
1
Johann Carl von Fichard, ‘Gedichte Johanns von Soest, eines Hofsängers und Arzts.
Von 1501 und 1504’, Frankfurtisches Archiv für ältere deutsche Litteratur und Geschichte 1
(1811): 75–139, 86.
2
See, for example, Lennard J. Davis, ‘The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning
of Dismodernism. On Disability as an Unstable Category’, in Bending Over Backwards.
Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions (2002), 9–32. Davis puts forward a
‘dismodernist’ ethics of the body and ‘a new category based on the partial, incomplete subject
whose realization is not autonomy and independence but dependency and interdependence.
This is a very different notion from subjectivity organized around wounded identities; rather,
all humans are seen as wounded’ (30).
of people who were described first and foremost as ‘infirm’ by close relatives
share any narrative traits with these texts. My aim is to determine whether an
underlying discourse of ‘disability’ can be identified with regard to these closely
related types of texts. What both types have in common is that they are part of
an endeavour that can be called domestic writing, a fairly recent trend in late
medieval historiography concerned mainly with family history and genealogical
information, but also suitable for individual self-affirmation as well as for

moral instruction and biographical exempla. Many of these texts were written
for immediate family members, but some of them circulated well beyond this
restricted group of recipients.
It might be helpful to approach textual constructions of ‘infirmity’ by a close
reading of the text whenever instances of ‘infirmity’ are mentioned, focusing in
detail on what happens in the narrative as well as on a textual level3 – what did
people do in these situations; how were they supposed to act? What does the text
do in order to establish ‘infirmity’, or maybe to negate it? Pre-modern life writing
can offer valuable insight with regard to performative aspects of pre-modern
dis/ability, and, consequently, contribute to the paramount question: How
was dis/ability brought into being in times past, and is there any resemblance
to modern notions of dis/ability? As I would like to show in the course of this
chapter, ostentatious, demonstrative acts that were meant to help overcome
‘infirmity’ – or at least sincere attempts to do so – could, for certain social groups,
become an inevitable social obligation: ‘infirmity’, understood as an ordinary,
even inescapable aspect of human life, did not automatically entail a social status
of difference, it did, however, demand certain coping capabilities. If these social
requirements were not met, this could have lasting consequences with respect to
the social status of an individual. In order to prevent this, people engaged in life
writing went to great lengths in order to demonstrate social, especially familial,
affiliations, which were apparently regarded as a primary part of possible coping
strategies. Consequently, instances of ‘infirmity’ were not assessed solely by the
physical state of the body, but to a great extent by the social ‘response’ the person
in question was able to muster. In a matter of speaking, ‘infirmity’ was a social
event based on specific rules of symbolic communication. This also implies
some sort of audience, which, as we will see, plays an important part within the
respective narratives.
3
See Almut Suerbaum and Manuele Gragnolati, ‘Medieval Culture “betwixt and
between”: An introduction’, in Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, eds Almut
Suerbaum and Manuele Gragnolati (2010), 1–12, 6.
Performing Dis/ability? 53
Coping with ‘Infirmity’
I take the rhymed autobiography of Johann von Soest as my first example.

Johann wrote about his life in c. 1504 or 1505, shortly before he died. According
to the text, he wanted to serve as an educational example for (his?) children.
The first part of the autobiography is dedicated to his ‘sinful’ life, whereas the
second deals with Johann’s reversal to a faithful and virtuous attitude.4 Almost
right at the beginning of the text, while dealing with his infancy, Johann talks
about severe scald injuries caused by burning oil; these left his face scarred and
impaired his ability to see so that he became ‘blind’ on both eyes (und wart
myt beyden aughen blynt). According to Johann, this was his first experience of
enormous impact.5 What follows is a narrative of ‘infirmity’ and subsequent
(partial) ‘recovery’: a significant experience the author could have used further
as a fundamental mode of self-description – but did he?
In general, childhood accidents feature prominently in pre-modern
autobiographies. This might be due to their often life-threatening component,
which presumably led to lasting memories on part of their parents or custodians,
and thus to stories often told and retold amongst family members. Furthermore,
accidents and illnesses could serve symbolic purposes in pre-modern life writing:
the child presumably survived due to miraculous rescue, a trope that is meant
to foreshadow the narrator’s later importance and spiritual excellence. Having
established this basic notion, a sinful, errant past can be unfolded without fear of
being judged too harshly – the narrator’s transgressions are already cancelled out
by an early promise of salvation. Thus, the beginning of the narrator’s earthly life
already hints at the beginning of his eternal life.6 This autobiographical formula
gained increasing popularity during the second half of the sixteenth century;
however, it is already partly apparent in fifteenth-century life writing.
Johann’s von Soest autobiography, for example, links this providential
formula with a traditional narrative model: he looks back on his life as a
sinner, which an experience of spiritual revelation has enabled him to do. The
act of writing about his own life therefore puts his struggle for spiritual clear-
4
See Markus Stock, ‘Effekte des Authentischen? Selbstentwurf und Referenz in
der Autobiographie Johanns von Soest (1504/05)’, in Texttyp und Textproduktion in der
deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, eds Elizabeth Andersen, Manfred Eikelmann and Anne
Simon (2005), 267–83, here 274–5. See also Horst Brunner, ‘Johann von Soest, Willibald
Pirckheimer – zwei Fallstudien’, in Autorentypen, eds Walter Haug and Burghart Wachinger
(1991), 89–103; Gesa Bonath, ‘Johann von Soest’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters.
Verfasserlexikon, eds Kurt Ruh et al. (1978–2008), IV (1983), cols 744–55 [cols 753–4].
5
Fichard, ‘Gedichte’, 86.
6
See Bianca Frohne, Leben mit ‘kranckhait’. Der gebrechliche Körper in der häuslichen
Überlieferung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Überlegungen zu einer Disability History der
Vormoderne (2014), 332–9.
sightedness on display.7 It is tempting to interpret his first experience of asserted

biographical significance – the loss of eyesight – as a story of being in need of,
and eventually receiving, spiritual enlightenment. According to Johann, one of
his eyes was restored after a pilgrimage to a saint’s shrine – is this to be read
as a foreshadowing of his spiritual healing, which will eventually enable him
to ‘overcome’ his sinful life, as has recently been suggested?8 Interestingly, the
question of spiritual guidance, which Johann often raises, is never linked to

his ability to see or to his physical state at any point. What is more, within the
narrative of his ‘blindness’, faithful devotion does not even rank first; instead,
the actions of a specific social group are of leading importance: the focus lies on
Johann’s mother, who is said to have been descended from a long-established
family of renown, and her kin.
Concerned with the accident, the text underlines her feelings of great
distress and motherly love; she immediately promises a pilgrimage in order
to prevent that her beloved son would become blind.9 However, after the
pilgrimage is completed, no miraculous healing occurs. The left side of Johann’s
face remains severely damaged, and even after a long healing process, only one
eye is capable of seeing again. It is telling that neither the saint’s name nor his
location is mentioned; the votive offering left at his shrine is treated only in
passing. Furthermore, we do not hear about any prayers, nor is the mother’s
faith stressed in any way: her decision to go on a pilgrimage for her son’s sake
is described, rather prosaically, as a regular social practice that was generally
deemed beneficial in situations like these. For example, although at least two
ritual speech acts10 are implied in the text, neither is described in any detail: first,
the pledge to the saint is mentioned rather briefly, instead, Johann underlines
the great love the mother felt for him. Second, we hear nothing about prayers
or pleas for intercession when it comes to the votive offering at the shrine. As
a whole, the description of the pilgrimage is more concerned with the journey
According to Horst Wenzel, Die Autobiographie des späten Mittelalters und der frühen
7
Neuzeit. Die Selbstdeutung des Stadtbürgertums (1980), 84, Johann represents decidedly non-
individual values, but styles himself as ‘exemplary sinner’ with the help of a triad of religious
themes (‘sinful youth’ – ‘repentance and reversal’ – ‘resignation to God’s will’), see ibid.; also
Brunner, ‘Johann von Soest’, 94; Bonath, ‘Johann von Soest’, col. 754; Stock, ‘Effekte des
Authentischen’, 275–80.
8
Ibid.
9
Fichard, ‘Gedichte’, 86: Myn mutter des fast ser erschragh/Sy mych gelob den selben tag
/ Zum helghen das ich nyt wort blynt / So lyb mich hatt als dan yr Kynt.
10
See, for example, Suerbaum and Gragnolati, ‘Medieval Culture’, 4; Jürgen
Martschukat and Steffen Patzold, ‘Geschichtswissenschaft und “performative turn”. Eine
Einführung in Fragestellungen, Konzepte und Literatur’, in Geschichtswissenschaft und
‘performative turn’. Ritual, Inszenierung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit, eds
Jürgen Martschukat and Steffen Patzold (2003), 1–31, 10.
itself than with its religious significance: Johann mentions that his mother
undertook the pilgrimage soon, that she was accompanied by trustworthy
members of her own family (Yr gutten frond gynghen myt yr), and that she took
very good care of her son until they came back to the house where she lived
(Trag sy mych wydder fyn und schon/Byss yn yr hauss da sy dan sasz). The text
does not even confirm whether the pilgrimage did actually contribute to the
healing process;11 the child’s slow recovery appears as a natural process rather
than a miraculous cure. One could even say that the text makes use of a religious
setting in order to highlight a mother’s social ‘performance’: it establishes her
ability to find a socially acknowledged and widely accepted way of coping with
‘infirmity’; at the same time, it addresses her secure social position within her
familial network. On a textual level, the pilgrimage can thus be read as a public
act, a symbolic demonstration that the familial bonds remained intact in a time
of crisis, underlining the ability to cope with the full scope of worldly afflictions
evoked at the beginning of the autobiography.
What is especially interesting here: within this narrative context, Johann’s
‘infirmity’ is virtually obliterated. After the (social) ritual surrounding the
injured child’s body is completed, the theme ‘infirmity’ disappears completely
from the text, even though the body has not been fully restored to its former
state (regarding both function and appearance), as is explicitly stated.12 From
there on, Johann is depicted as a healthy child who is loved and admired by
his mother and everyone who meets him. At a very young age, he receives
praise for his extraordinary singing voice, and, after having undergone basic
education, furthers his career as singer at the court of Johann I of Cleves.13 In his
autobiography, he does not mention his disfigurement or the damage to his left
eye again.14 This is in accordance with Johann’s iconographical representation
in a manuscript he dedicated to Philip the Upright (1448–1508), Elector
Palatine of the Rhine: Johann kneels in front of Philip and presents him with
11
According to Stock, ‘Effekte des Authentischen’, 276, the implicit connection
between the pilgrimage and the recovery of the right eye is supposed to be evident.
12
According to Brunner, ‘Johann von Soest’, 91, Johan lost his left eye completely. The
extent of the damage is not entirely clear; however, we can infer from other sources that
the injury to his face must have been visible for the rest of his life, see Wie men wol eyn statt
regyrn sol. Didaktische Literatur und berufliche Schreiben des Johann von Soest, gen. Steinwert,
ed. Heinz-Dieter Heimann (1986), 11; Walter Karl Zülch, Johann Steinwert von Soest. Der
Sänger und Arzt (1448–1506) (1920), 6.
13
Later he took on commissioned works as a writer, musician and composer. Although
he had received a lifetime employment as musician at the palatine court in Heidelberg in
1472, he also studied medicine and worked as town physician. He was married two times and
died at the age of 58. See Bonath, ‘Johann von Soest’, cols 744–6.
14
A part of the original text is missing; but it is not likely that Johann addressed his
physical appearance therein. Ibid., col. 754.
the manuscript, which contains his German translation of a Middle Dutch

verse romance.15 The left side of the face is without any blemish, and his eye
is undamaged.16
It is especially noticeable that the permanent injuries caused by the accident
play no part at all in Johann’s description of his youth and the beginning of his
career. Within the autobiography, these episodes are supposed to underline
his straying from the path of virtue due to pride and growing arrogance. For
example, Johann accuses himself of having rather ruthlessly abandoned his
mother and having left the service of his patron in order to nurture his musical
talent elsewhere. His desire to distinguish himself in society thus leads to
several morality conflicts.17 From a narrator’s point of view, Johann might have
implied that his ambition had been spurred by the need to compensate for his
impairment, or that he had been ‘blind’ to the values of loyalty and gratitude.18
However, none of these tropes are evident in the text; rather, the single episode
that highlights ‘infirmity’ and vulnerability ties Johann to the social integrity
and familial solidarity his mother and her kin had displayed at that moment.
From there on, his impairment is completely omitted from the narrative, and
he is increasingly set apart from his family’s socially acknowledged behaviour.19
All in all, it is hardly possible to state that Johann used the concept of
‘infirmity’ as a mode of self-description. At the beginning of his autobiography,
‘infirmity’ is thematically approached; however, it is not of any biographical
significance. It does not teach him humility, or strengthen his loyalty towards
his family. It is neither a hindrance nor an advantage, and the theme is not taken
up again after his spiritual conversion. Even if the pilgrimage can be read as a
15
The panegyric text was commissioned by Philip; it was most likely finished in 1479
or 1480. See Bonath, ‘Johann von Soest’, cols 747–8; Brunner, ‘Johann von Soest’, 100–102.
See for a description of the manuscript Johann von Soest, Die Kinder von Limburg, ed. from
Cod. Pal. germ. 87 by Manfred Klett (1975), pp. III–X.
16
A digitised version of the manuscript is accessible via http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.
de/diglit/cpg87/0016?sid=8ca445568193e7a6f09eee25bf39a13b (Cod. Pal. germ. 87, front
binding; accessed 22 September 2013).
17
See also Wenzel, Autobiographie, 81–4.
18
These tropes were commonly associated with literary representations of blindness,
see, for example, Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind. Medieval Constructions
of a Disability (2010).
19
Interestingly, it is his mother whose suffering is depicted most emphatically during
these later episodes. Maybe this is why Johann focuses solely on his mother and her family
during the episode of the pilgrimage. When he left her, his father had already died, but
according to the autobiography he had still been alive when the accident occurred. It is
unclear why Johann made no mention of his father during that time of crisis, but it is possible
that putting emphasis on his mother was in better accordance with his childhood narrative,
which deals primarily with her motherly love and his ingratitude towards her.
symbolically charged example of the social values which he (temporarily) turned

away from due to juvenile arrogance and ambition, ‘infirmity’ does not have
any lasting effects on the construction of Johann’s social identity. The personal
experience of ‘infirmity’ is rendered into a story about familial coping strategies;
therefore, the injury to his body is addressed mainly in terms of social response
and family care. His physical body, however, enters the text only for a brief
moment, and vanishes – for good – soon after an act of overcoming ‘infirmity’
has been adequately performed.
Glancing at ‘Infirmity’
A strikingly similar pattern can be found in a text of otherwise completely different

origin and textual structure: the autobiography of Gottfried von Berlichingen
(1480–1562), the Imperial Knight also known as ‘Götz of the Iron Hand’. At
the age of 24 Götz was shot at and badly injured during the battle for Landshut;
due to these injuries he lost his right hand.20 In his autobiography, which was
written more than half a century later, there is a description of this incident that
shows, on the one hand, an almost excessive amount of detail, yet still is, on the
other hand, strangely detached.21 In order to compare this description with the
autobiography written by Johann von Soest, I am going to take a closer look
at what actually happens on a textual level. Due to its remarkable attention to
detail, the relevant section of the text is given in full:
Vnnd wie ich also hallt, vnnd sihe nach dem vortheill, so habenn die
Nurnnbergischen das geschutz inn vnns gericht, inn feindt vnnd freundt, wie
vorgemeltt, vnd scheust mir einer denn schwertt kopff mit einer veldtschlanngenn
enntzwey, das mir das halbtheil inn arm gienng, vnnd drey armschinenn darmit.
Vnnd lag der schwerdt knopff inn armschinenn, das man ine nit sehenn kunth,
also das mich noch wundertt, das es mich nit vonn dem gaull herab gezogen hatt,
dieweil die armschinenn ganntz bliebenn, dann allein die eckhenn wie sie sich
gebogenn hettenn, gienngen noch ein wenig herrauß, aber der schwertt knopff
lag wie gemeldt inn armschinen drinnen. Das annder theill des knopffs, vnnd die
stangen am schwert hefft hett sich gebogenn, wahr aber doch nit entzwey, das ich
gedenckh, die stanng, vnd das ander theill vom knopff, hab mir zwischen dem
henntschuch vnd dem arm zeug, die hanndt herab geschlagen, also das der arm
20
Götz von Berlichingen, Mein Fehd und Handlungen, ed. by Helgard Ulmschneider
(1981) (hereafter Fehd), 75–7.
21
See Sonja Kerth, ‘Die letzten taflrunder? Krieg in adligen Autobiographien des 15.
und 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Dulce bellum inexpertis. Bilder des Krieges in der deutschen Literatur
des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, eds Horst Brunner et al. (2002), 175–245, at 228.
hindenn vnd vornn zerschmettert wahr. Vnnd wie ich so dar siehe, so hanngtt die
hanndt noch ein wenig ann der hautt, vnnd leitt der spieß dem gaull vnnder denn
fuessen. So thett ich ebenn, alls wehr mir nichts darumb, vndt wanndt denn gaull
algemach vmb, vnnd kham danach vnngefangenn vonn denn feindenn hinweg zu
meinem hauffenn.22
So what exactly happens? First, Götz describes his gaze towards his enemies,
when, suddenly, a cannon is fired, and the reader gets to see, slowly and
successively, its disastrous effects, including a meticulous record of the way flesh
and metal had merged. Götz notes that he is still in awe about the fact that the
impact had not thrown him off his horse; mild surprise is the only emotion that
colours the scene. However, the audience is made to follow the knight’s gaze
in what can be described as a series of extreme close-ups. These focus on the
vambrace, on the hole driven into it, its protruding angles, and on the pommel
of his sword, which is stuck deep inside his arm. The gaze then wanders along
the forearm to the hand, thereby revealing the actual amount of destruction:
the arm is shattered to the bone, and one of his hands has been struck off. At
this point, the perspective widens, and Götz sees his hand, which is still loosely
connected to his arm. His weapon is lying on the floor. At this moment, he turns
his horse around and rides back to his comrades.
In this passage, several narrative positions blur into one, mixing vivid,
disturbing images with calm contemplation. Götz is present in his tale and as a
narrator; he is, at the same time, the one who suffered a terrible injury, and the
one analysing the event. Even if, as a narrator, he does not convey any emotion,
the narration very skilfully draws a highly emotional response from the audience,
making them undergo the experience of shock and horrible realization that must
have hit Götz on the battlefield: the flow of time ceases during the perception
22
Fehd, 76: ‘And as I pause and look at the vantage ground, those from Nuremberg
have set the cannon on us, on friend and foe alike, as I have said above, and one of them
shoots the pommel of my sword to pieces with a field culverin, so that half of the pommel
entered my arm, and also three plates of the vambrace. And so the pommel was buried
[completely] in the vambrace, so that it could not be seen anymore, which makes me wonder
why I had not been thrown off my horse [due to the impact], because [the plates of ] the
vambrace had [each] remained in one piece, only the angle at which [each plate of the] the
vambrace had been bent [inward] projected a little beyond [the vambrace], but the pommel
was, as mentioned before, stuck inside of the vambrace. The other half of the pommel and
the sword’s crossguard were bent, but they were still in one piece, so I think the crossguard
and the other half of the pommel must have struck off my hand in between my gloves and the
armour of my arm, so that the forearm was smashed completely. And when I look at this, I
see my hand dangling from a strip of skin, and the pike is lying at the horse’s feet. So I acted as
if it was nothing, and slowly turned my horse, and, leaving the foes behind without capture,
returned to my army’.
of the wound, and the gaze focuses abruptly on different objects, for example
first on the wound, then suddenly on the weapon on the floor. A contrast is
established between the skilful narrator and a supposedly startled audience,
culminating in the sequence’s closing image, in which the injured knight rides
away as if nothing had happened: the injury is turned into an object of wonder
and admiration, a tale which has apparently often been told and retold.
It is not surprising, then, that Götz’s further account of events deals mainly
with his ‘audience’ at Landshut, whereas the physical implications of the injury
are ignored for the time being. In fact, the description of the injury is preceded
by a detailed account of the injured knight being transported to a place where
he could receive treatment. Thus, even before we come to know what actually
happened, several people are introduced who worry about the injured knight’s
life, offer support and shelter. Going even further, back, the whole sequence
starts with a short recapitulation of the military events leading to the siege of
Landshut.23 At this point, Götz already announces that this was the time and
place where he was shot, but he does not offer any further explanation.24 Instead
he describes the efforts of those surrounding him to contribute to his care, and
pays special regard to the crowd standing around his sickbed (viell gutter leutt as
well as vill groser hansenn).25 Interestingly, Götz does not include any description
of the medical treatment he apparently received immediately after the accident.26
Instead he focuses his attention on his visitors at Landshut, many of whom had
been fighting for the enemy’s side. All of them give a detailed account of the events
from their point of view. Götz underlines their ability to specify several details
about him, which serve as means of authenticity (wortzaichenn): what the crests
of his helmet and horse had looked like, and which deeds he had performed on
the battlefield. These acts of collective remembrance apparently followed some
kind of ritualized formula; it was meant to confirm and acknowledge Götz’s
knightly valour.27
It is only at the very end of these detailed descriptions that Götz approaches
the loss of his hand, as well as the pain and despair it caused him. He admits
that he went so far to ask God to take his life because he was no longer capable
of being a warrior. At one point, however, he remembers a one-handed warrior
who could fight as well as any man, and thus his faith returns: God would surely
help him to be a warrior again if only he, Götz, had some aid, for example an
23
Ibid., 74–5.
24
Ibid., 76. Apparently, Götz expected any audience to be aware of his injury from the
start.
25
Ibid., 75. He compares these visits to a pilgrimage: es wahr gleich ein walfart zu mir.
26
Götz mentions briefly that a soldier whom he asked for help immediately after he had
managed to leave the battlefield was also appointed the task of calling for medical aid, ibid.,
76.
27
Ibid., 77.
iron hand. The sequence ends with a glimpse of the future: Götz points out that
he has been living and fighting with one hand (mit einer faust) for over 60 years
now; therefore he knows that God has always been with him in his many fights
and feuds.28 In this respect, the sequence can be ascribed – at least indirectly – to
a ‘remasculization narrative’ which often structures modern stories about injured
veterans: ‘[…] the familiar story of the disabled, and hence feminized, veteran,
who overcomes the physical limitations and the rolelessness that disability is
said to make inevitable through a feat of self-rehabilitation, whether by strength
or endurance, politically or sexually, and in doing so becomes a real man once
more’.29 In close analogy to this pattern, Götz’s account is skilfully arranged
in order to highlight this very moment of self-rehabilitation: the exceptional
circumstances and the severity of the life-threatening injury are pointed out by
the vivid description of his transport and following ‘pilgrimage’ (walfart) to his
sickbed; his warrior comrades’ ritualized acts of remembrance further underline
that his deeds deserve to be part of their collective memory. The account of
the injury itself shows that Götz is capable of turning his traumatic experience
into an exciting narrative that is very clearly addressed at a wider audience,
thereby highlighting, once more, his importance and social status. The text
itself is therefore evidence of the fact that Götz had suffered, and overcome, an
exceptional fate.
However, most of the relevant passages, with the exception of the last one,
do not deal with feelings of powerlessness, helplessness or discouragement. Not
once do we see Götz unconscious or being treated by medical personal.30 Even
at the very moment that allows for a glimpse of his desperation and physical
pain, the injured man suffers foremost from his inability of being a knight. Thus,
even by evoking pain and misery he demonstrates a role-model attitude: his
fear of being an inadequate or incapable fighter is an idealized utterance which
befits his rank and status, following the assumption that a knight would prefer
death to not being able to be a knight.31 In this regard it is interesting that the
Ibid. The rest of the (markedly apologetic) autobiography is mainly dedicated to

28
these military activities; Götz argues that his controversial endeavours were accomplished
in good faith and with God’s blessing. See Kerth, ‘Die letzten taflrunder’, 213–29; Helgard
Ulmschneider, Götz von Berlichingen. Ein adeliges Leben der deutschen Renaissance (1974),
92–4.
29
David A. Gerber, ‘Preface to the Enlarged and Revised Edition: The Continuing
Relevance of the Study of Disabled Veterans’, in Disabled Veterans in History, Enlarged and
Revised Edition, ed. David A. Gerber (2012), ix–xxiii, at xiv; see also Gerber, ‘Introduction:
Finding Disabled Veterans in History’, in ibid., 1–51, esp. 5–11.
30
Even though this might of course be explained by lack of consciousness itself, it is
quite telling that Götz chose to omit these aspects.
31
See also Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe. Thinking about Physical
Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (2006), 162–3: According to high
body in its ‘infirmity’ is hardly visible, whereas the ‘spectacular’ injury has been
visualized from various points of view. The injured body, however, is blocked out
and replaced by an idealized vision of knighthood and fighting spirit. The text
focuses completely on this act of transformation: a vulnerable body is overcome
by willpower, religious faith and adaptability. Götz’s physical integrity is thereby
restored to such an extent that no ‘infirmity’ is left at all on a textual level;
consequently, neither the missing hand nor the iron prosthesis are – with two
marginal exceptions – mentioned again in the whole autobiography.32
However, there must have been problems. The iron hand was only of limited
use because it did not allow to grasp objects firmly enough to wield them in
combat. Sword fighting, for example, would have been impossible.33 It is
therefore likely that Götz had to train his left hand in order to compensate for
the loss of the right one, which would have required a rather long and difficult
learning process.34 Interestingly, iron hands were apparently used in order to
maintain horsemanship, an ability of central importance to a knight. Götz would
have been able to hold a horse’s reins and to steer it without further assistance.
The iron hand might even have been constructed for this specific function.35
Furthermore, the prosthesis served cosmetic functions: traces of incarnadine
paint found on the iron hand indicate that prostheses were meant to give the
medieval miracle accounts, the desire to end one’s life after having suffered from severe illness
or injury is expressed almost exclusively by noblemen, especially by knights. For further
discussion, see Jenni Kuuliala’s chapter in this volume.
32
At one point Götz briefly mentions repairs on his iron hand: Fehd, 118. He
also proudly refers to Emperor Maximilian I., who had supposedly praised his skill as a
warrior with regard to his handicap: Fehd, 96. See also Oliver Auge, ‘So solt er im namen
gottes mit mir hinfahren, ich were doch verderbt zu einem kriegsmann. Durch Kampf und
Turnier körperlich versehrte Adelige im Spannungsfeld von Ehrpostulat und eigener
Leistungsfähigkeit’, Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte, 28 (2009): 21–46; Yuval Noah
Harari, Renaissance Military Memoirs. War, History, and Identity, 1450–1600 (2004),
48–50; Karolina Meyer-Schilf, ‘dazu jch jedem raten wil / er buw vff kriegen nit zu vil –
Grundüberlegungen und Forschungsperspektiven zum Umgang mit Kriegsinvalidität im
Spätmittelalter’, in Phänomene der ‘Behinderung’ im Alltag – Bausteine zu einer Disability
History der Vormoderne, ed. Cordula Nolte (2013), 113–23, at 118–20.
33
See Günter Quasigroch, ‘Die Handprothesen des fränkischen Reichsritters Götz von
Berlichingen. 1. Fortsetzung: Die Ersthand’, Waffen und Kostümkunde 24 (1982): 17–33, at
30–32.
34
See ibid., 2. ‘Fortsetzung: Die Zweithand’, Waffen und Kostümkunde, 25 (1983):
103–20, at 113–16: Götz did probably not make use of another, more advanced prosthesis
before c. 1530. This second model was more fragile than the first and would not have been of
much use in combat.
35
See Quasigroch, ‘Handprothesen I’, 30–32.
impression of a lifelike hand. The imitation of joints and even fingernails also
supports this assumption.36
In accordance with these findings, it is not surprising that Götz’s self-
description focuses mainly on questions of appearance, representation
and social response. His missing hand barely alters the content of his self-
image, but essentially serves to strengthen his heroic posture. Comparing
the autobiographies of Johann von Soest and Götz von Berlichingen, there
are interesting similarities to consider: both put more emphasis on people
reacting to their injuries than on the injured body itself. Even though the
severity of the wounds is stressed, medical treatment is omitted completely
from both narratives. Instead, supportive actions of family, friends and peers
are highlighted; their interest in the injured person’s well-being unmistakably
hints at social value and appreciation. Furthermore, in both texts the theme of
‘infirmity’ disappears, strikingly, at the very moment it is touched upon, and
does not reappear. Their ‘infirm’ bodies are apparently changeable, structured
by social images and roles. In a way, an ‘infirm’ body is a ‘performative’ body –
in order to be established, it has to be reiterated, and if that does not happen,
the body can be read anew in a variety of contexts and meanings.37 However,
we also have to take into consideration that Götz von Berlichingen and Johann
von Soest aspired to successful careers; both had gained enough social prestige
to ensure that their bodies were interpreted according to the preferred images
and ideals prevalent within their social groups. So what happened to those who
experienced ‘infirmity’, but did not write about themselves?
Establishing ‘Infirmity’
There a several examples of family books, diaries and genealogical accounts

which make use of ‘infirmity’ as a fixed category. In these cases, the ‘infirm’
body of a family member or a relative is often presented as an aspect of central
biographical significance and, furthermore, as a defining characteristic. Whereas
family books from the examined period are usually concerned with questions
of marriage, offspring, status, estate, career, offices and memorable deeds, we
know about some genealogical entries that pass on the physical appearance or
state of health of certain family members. In many cases, we do not know for
See ibid., 22–9.

36
See, with respect to the examined period, Hans Rudolf Velten, ‘Grotesker und
37
komischer Körper. Für ein performatives Körperkonzept’, in Der komische Körper. Szenen –
Figuren – Formen, ed. Eva Erdmann (2003), 145–53.
sure for what reason this information had been recorded, or if they imply an
unfavourable assessment of the person in question.38
However, some family books contain rather elaborate biographical accounts
that could shed some light on the question of how ‘infirmity’ was regarded and
passed on as a relevant category. If we compare these texts to the respective passages
from the autobiographies of Johann von Soest and Götz von Berlichingen, we
are confronted with interesting parallels: here we find emphasis on various social
responses and especially on supportive actions. Yet there is also an important
difference: in contrast to our autobiographical narrators, family historiographers
often stress how every effort to help an ‘infirm’ person to overcome ‘infirmity’
had failed. They also use terms like ‘infirmity’ (gebrechenhaftigkeit) on a regular
basis to describe the person in question.
The Nuremberg councilman Endres Imhoff (1491–1579), for example, wrote
about one of his grandsons by name of Endres Kreß (1556–88) that he had been
an ‘infirm’ child (ein geprechenhafft kind) since birth and that this condition was
still visible on the day the entry was made. Many (medical) therapies had been
tried, but nothing had been to any avail, however with God’s help he might still
come to his soul’s blessing.39
Biographical entries dealing with ‘infirm’ family members who had already
died often place even more emphasis on a religious framework. The persons
in question are, for example, compared to martyrs; their pain and suffering
are emphasized.40 Interestingly, physical pain is often explicitly ascribed to
medical therapies. This is especially noticeable in the biographical account
of Lazarus Imhoff (1533–64), one of the aforementioned Endres Imhoff ’s
38
One example is the family book of the Nuremberg family Held: here, among the 10
children of one Barbara Held’s (d. 1571), a daughter called Anna is listed. Next to her name
are words written in the red ink which was used in order to emphasize important information;
they simply state: ist ein zwergin gewest (‘[she] was a dwarf ’), Germanisches Nationalmuseum
Nürnberg, Hs. 7177, fol. 119r. It is likely that this information was considered important
within the context of her marital state; when Anna died, she was not married. See also
Frohne, Leben, 122–33; on a similar example from the fifteenth century also Bianca Frohne,
‘Skolastica ist plint. Überlegungen zu einer Disability History der Vormoderne anhand
familiengeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Phänomene der
‘Behinderung’ im Alltag – Bausteine zu einer Disability History der Vormoderne, ed. Cordula
Nolte (2013), 37–58.
39
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Imhoff-Archiv, Fasc. 44, No. 1, fol. 57r. From other
sources we know that Endres married several years after his grandfather had died. According
to the matrimonial contract, he had promised his future wife a separate part of his legacy,
worth 3,000 gulden, as compensation for the care and hard work she would have with
him due to the ‘infirmity of his body’ (von wegen seiner leibs gebrechlichkait). Stadtarchiv
Nürnberg, B 14/III, No. 1, fols 182rv; see Frohne, Leben, 147–56, 291–3.
40
See for example Albert Haemmerle ed., Derer von Stetten Geschlechterbuch (1955),
93; also Frohne, Leben, passim.
sons who had suffered from seizures since his childhood and became visually
impaired a few years before his death. According to Endres Imhoff ’s records,
he had repeatedly, yet unsuccessfully attempted to make Lazarus a part of the
family trading company; also he had spent a considerable amount of money
on medical therapies that are listed meticulously in the family book. However,
Imhoff concludes his description of his son’s life with the admission that all
applied measures had failed. He summarizes: Vnd hett seine tag nit vil gesundter
zeit gehabt, auch gar vil smerzen gehabt vnd vil geliden, das man an im gepraucht
hot, die weil es dan also gotlicher wil ist gewest, so sey sein heilliger nam jn ewigkeitt
gelobt vnd gepreist. Amen.41
Endres Imhoff also underlines that Lazarus had been sickly since early
childhood, thus rendering the life of the ‘infirm’ family member full circle, while
ensuring that the family could not be accused of neglecting his medical care, his
social career and ultimately his chances of overcoming his affliction. Seen within
this context, emphasis on the family’s or peers’ social ‘performance’ seems to have
served a different function than in the already discussed autobiographies, where it
is utilized as a symbolic demonstration of the injured person’s social appreciation
and, therefore, as a narrative strategy in order to overlay ‘infirmity’ with other
characteristics. In these cases, ‘infirmity’ vanishes from the description and is
replaced by socially highly valued attributes. Within family books, however,
emphasis on familial support and coping strategies does not work out in the
same way for those described as ‘infirm’ – in fact, quite the opposite. These texts
were meant to demonstrate that a social group had tried to prevent a member
from developing social deficits to the best of their abilities, thereby implicitly
placing a certain amount of blame on those who did not overcome ‘infirmity’ to
such an extent as to make it socially invisible or neglectable. The obligation to
successfully cope with ‘infirmity’ is thus very clearly enacted within these texts.
We might even regard them as complementary part to the advantageous self-
descriptions of Johann von Soest and Götz von Berlichingen.
Conclusions
Familial writings played an important part in the shaping and preserving of

supposedly ‘infirm’ family member’s memoria. Regardless of the way the person
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Imhoff-Archiv, Fasc. 44, No. 1, fol. 64v: ‘He
41
did not have many healthy days during his life time, and suffered enormously from many
cures that were tried on him, but since it was the will of God, his name shall be lauded and
praised in eternity. Amen’. See also Klaus-Peter Horn and Bianca Frohne, ‘On the Fluidity of
“Disability” in Medieval and Early Modern Societies. Opportunities and Strategies in a New
Field of Research’, in The Imperfect Historian. Disability Histories in Europe, eds Sebastian
Barsch, Anne Klein and Pieter Verstraete (2013), 17–40, at 30–37; Frohne, Leben, 137–47.
in question was approached in daily life, their biographies often established a

status of ‘specialness’, something that was beyond the remedies of family and
peers. Family books as well as autobiographical accounts were often passed
on from father to son; they were copied and read aloud at special occasions.
Younger family members expected to learn moral lessons from these texts and to
strive to shape their own memory accordingly. In this regard, Johann von Soest
and Götz von Berlichingen succeeded in turning ‘infirmity’ into advantageous

self-descriptions which are in accordance with their respective social role. The
biographical accounts of those who could not participate in shaping their own
memory also follow specific narrative patterns, resulting, however, in a negative
balance; their lives are often reduced to aspects of pain, suffering and a lack of
social adaptability.
In contrast to those notions of ‘disability’ that have become known as the
so-called medical model, pre-modern labels of ‘infirmity’ did not implicate a
‘clinical gaze’; in fact, detailed descriptions of bodies in a state of ‘infirmity’ are
noticeably absent from pre-modern life writing. Whereas it would be inaccurate
to claim that pre-modern notions of ‘infirmity’ could be compared to the
modern medical model of ‘disability’, it is still remarkable that ‘infirmity’ was
rather consistently met with the explicitly stated desire, even a social obligation,
to attempt to overcome socially ‘disabling’ effects. The repeatedly assured
willingness to undergo painful therapies as well as the – complementary –
emphasis on social support associated with the act of coping with and eventually
overcoming ‘infirmity’ hint at a high amount of social pressure, presumably
combined with a prevalent fear of losing social positions and status.42 In pre-
modern life writing, we find that ‘disabilities’ as well as ‘abilities’ were enacted
with regard to specific images and ideals. The reality of the human body,
however, regarding its fundamental vulnerability and the inevitable deficiencies
that affect all human beings, was often dismissed one way or another.
42
See also Horn and Frohne, ‘Fluidity’, 39.

Chapter 4
Nobility, Community and Physical
Impairment in Later Medieval
Canonization Processes*
Jenni Kuuliala
Introduction
In later medieval society, a person’s social status had great importance in how his
or her corporality, concerning appearance and physical capacities, was viewed.1
The poor and peasants were more easily associated with the body as well as bodily
ailments2 while the elite were associated with the soul. In gendered religious
discourse, this pertains especially to men, for the discussions concerning women’s
bodies mostly concentrated on the domestic realm and sexuality. However, elite
women were also occasionally associated with the more spiritual and intellectual
aspects of these realms.3
The elite, and especially secular nobility, also had its own views of a faultless
body. The idealized lord was physically strong, and medieval aristocrats
were fascinated by their power, as well as what was required to maintain it.4
Additionally, a noble knight was characterized by physical beauty. Physical
impairment, naturally, made it more difficult if not impossible to fulfil these
* Writing this chapter has been supported by the Academy of Finland and the
BREMEN TRAC co-funded Marie Curie program of the European Commission (7th
framework programme). I am grateful to Brian Holt for revising the English text.
1
Rudolf Hiestand, ‘Kranker König – kranker Bauer’, in Der kranke Mensch in
Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed. Peter Wunderli (1986), 61–77.
2
See Abigail Comber, ‘A Medieval King ‘Disabled’ by an Early Modern Construct:
A Contextual Examination of Richard III’, in Disability in the Middle Ages. Reconsiderations
and Reverberations, ed. Joshua R. Eyler (2010), 183–96, at 187.
3
Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris. Gender, Ideology, and the Daily
Lives of the Poor (2006), 47, 106–7.
4
Constance Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave & Noble. Chivalry & Society in
Medieval France (1998), ix.
ideals.5 Noblewomen’s primary bodily task was securing the continuation of the
family line, but physical beauty was also an important characteristic of them.6
Medieval sources thus give us information on the physical ideals of the
(lay) elite, but when it comes to the other side of the coin – prolonged bodily
infirmity – the situation is quite the opposite. Although nobility suffered less
from conditions caused by hard work and malnutrition, they were otherwise by
no means immune to physical impairments as the results of accidents, diseases

or war injuries. Yet, as concluded by several scholars, written sources about them
are extremely rare.7
There have been occasional attempts to explain this shortage of sources. Based
on chronicles, Rudolf Hiestand writes that among royalty and nobility there
was a need to conceal physical imperfections, which could put the rulers into
a risk of losing their power. According to Hiestand, illnesses and impairments
were also a reason for marginalization among nobility, while the lower classes,
the attitudes of whom he analysed based on miracle accounts, expressed no
such reservations.8 Ronald Finucane notes that the nobility was more likely to
report other types of miracles than cures. According to him, the wealthier may
have had better opportunities to search for help from medici (physicians), but
also that they wanted to disassociate themselves from ailments that commonly
afflicted the peasantry. For a nobleman, illness and weakness were shameful
imperfections, and sensitivity to shame was one of nobility’s burdens.9 Irina
Metzler’s analysis on miracle collections from the tenth to the twelfth century
does not contradict Finucane’s findings, as the cases found by her where a
disabled miraculé is portrayed as having felt himself a burden are about nobility.10
Gerhard Jaritz, ‘“Young, Rich, and Beautiful”. The Visualization of Male Beauty in
5
the Middle Ages’, in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways. Festschrift in
Honour of János M. Bak, eds Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők (1999), 61–78, esp. 61.
6
Bouchard, Strong of Body, 131–2.
7
See Gabriela Antunes and Björn Reich, ‘(De)formierte Körper, die Wahrnehmung
und das Andere im Mittelalter: Eine Einleitung’, in (De)formierte Körper. Die Wahrnehmung
und das Andere im Mittelalter, eds Gabriela Antunes and Björn Reich (2010), 9–30; Ronald
Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (1995 [1977]),
149–50; Hiestand, ‘Kranker König’, 63; Irina Metzler, A Social History of Disability. Cultural
Considerations of Physical Impairment (2013), 36–41. Rachel Koopmans has come to
similar conclusions concerning clerical elite in high medieval miracula. Rachel Koopmans,
Wonderful to Relate. Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting in High Medieval England (2011),
42, 176.
8
Hiestand, ‘Kranker König’, 65–8.
9
Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, 149–50.
10
Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe. Thinking about Physical Impairment
during the High Middle Ages, c.1100–1400 (2006), 162–3.
Nobility, Community and Physical Impairment 69
The notion about the scarcity of the reported miraculous cures of the nobility
seems to hold true also for the main sources of material for this chapter: the miracle
testimonies included in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century canonization
dossiers.11 Although the commissioners of the processes interrogated witnesses
from all social groups and the cults of saints had penetrated the whole society, the
word of the clerical and secular elite was considered the most trustworthy.12 Yet,
as is the case in the earlier miracle collections, the depositions of the uppermost
secular elite about their miraculous cures are rare. Somewhat more common are
the healing miracles of those belonging to the wealthy bourgeoisie, the clerical
elite and office-holders, but most witness accounts concerning healing miracles
were given by urban townspeople.
Since a significant part of the miracles investigated in canonization processes
were cures of various physical conditions,13 they provide an exceptionally
rich window into the views and experiences regarding various illnesses and
impairments. Based on the depositions concerning the miraculous cures of the
secular nobility, this chapter examines the way their physical conditions were
portrayed in the hearings. Are the scholars’ views summarized above visible and
did the witnesses, for example, report the beneficiary’s inability to fulfil social
roles, or feelings of shame or being a burden? Did their physical infirmities cause
11
Canonization processes were conducted by the papacy from the early thirteenth
century onwards to investigate the life, merits and miracles of a putative saint. On their legal
development and practicalities, see e.g. André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers
siècles du Moyen Âge. D’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (1988
[1981]); Thomas Wetzstein, Heilige vor Gericht. Das Kanonisationserfahren im europäischen
Spätmittelaltern (2004). Even though the interrogations were done following a strict set of
rules and according to a ready-made list of questions, it has been concluded that the witnesses’
voice is to some level audible in them. See Michael Goodich, ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis.
Social History and Medieval Miracles’, in Signs, Wonders, Miracles. Representations of Divine
Power in the Life of Church, eds Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (2005), 143–4.
12
See Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life. The Evidence of
Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (2009), 29–38; Christian Krötzl, ‘Prokuratoren,
Notare und Dolmetscher. Zu Gestaltung und Ablauf der Zeugeneinvernahmen bei
spätmittelalterlichen Kanonisationsprozessen’, Hagiographica 5 (1998): 119–40; Didier
Lett, Un procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Essai d’histoire sociale (2008), 215. The healing
miracles of the poor are also extremely rare in canonization processes, because they were
not considered trustworthy, and needed several witnesses for their cures. Farmer, Surviving
Poverty, 50–51.
13
Among physical impairments miraculously cured, mobility impairments are most
common. Miracles curing blindness were also regularly reported and investigated, while
deafness and muteness were rare. See Christian Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag: Formen
des Verhaltens im skandinavischen Mittelalter (12.–15. Jahrhundert) (1994), 188–9; Metzler,
Disability, 130–31, 256; Vauchez, La sainteté, 547.
marginalization? Finally, what can be said about the proportion of the miracles
done to the nobility in the canonization dossiers?
An important topic to discuss would be the ‘actual’ social status of the
beneficiaries. The nobility in the late Middle Ages was not a homogenous
group, but some of them were relatively poor while the others were enormously
powerful.14 Those calling themselves ‘noble’ could be powerful landowners
holding distinguished titles, their vassals, little lords or poor nobles or serfs
moving up in the world.15 The titles given in the depositions vary, the most
common ones being nobilis or miles (knight),16 in some cases domicellus,17 or
the wife or child of one.18 Occasionally, it is possible to detect their wealth or
status, but unfortunately, in most cases, the depositions do not provide sufficient
information to deduce the actual social standing of the witness, therefore they
must be treated as one social group.
Public Impairment, Private Suffering?
Analysing the publicity of impairment intermingles with the fama (public

reputation) of the putative saint, because publicity was a pre-requisite for a
miracle to be accepted, and often this matter was inquired from the witnesses.19
Because the elite were considered more trustworthy than the poor, fewer
witnesses were needed for their cures. Many instances of curing the nobility
still had quite a few witnesses,20 but as is typical of all social groups, except the
poor, most testimonies were given by members of their own social rank, or by
14
See e.g. M.L. Bush, Rich Noble, Poor Noble (1988). On the different titles in different
countries, see Antheun Janse, ‘Marriage and Noble Lifestyle in Holland in the Late Middle
Ages’, in Showing Status. Representations of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages, eds Wim
Blockmans and Antheun Janse (1999), 113–38.
15
See John Larner, John, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216–1380 (1981), 83.
16
Milites could come from the ranks of gentlemen, as the class of knights was wide
open for centuries. Especially in the later Middle Ages, however, there was little interest in
knighthood among gentlemen, due to its costs, duties and physical dangers. Georges Duby,
The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (1980), 96.
17
In medieval France, domicellus could refer to a king’s illegal son, a nobleman’s eldest
son or a noble youth not yet a knight. By 1250, the squires also insisted that they were titled
domicelli. Domicelli could also be servants of churchmen or monasteries. David Crouch,
The Birth of Nobility. Constructing Aristocracy in England and France: 900–1300 (2005),
250–51.
18
On these titles in Nicholas of Tolentino’s hearing, see Lett, Un procès de canonisation,
204–5.
19
See e.g. ibid., 204–5.
20
For a case where a nobleman testifies about his condition witnessed by nobody, see Il
processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino, ed. Nicola Occhioni (1984), 314.
the members of the household, who were considered to have the most intimate
information about the events.21
The testimonies reveal that impaired members of the nobility received help
and support from other men and women of their rank, and those residing in
noble courts were taken care of there. Katherine de Morbois, a lady-in-waiting
of Queen Marie of France (1254–1321), had a severely inflated knee. She was
married and had a house in Montmartre, but stayed in the court – also during
her impairment.22 She received help from ‘the others’, who carried her to her
bed and assisted her with her other necessities.23 Similarly, during the seven
weeks when Jehan le Chastenay, a knight, lay severely disabled in his bed, he was
helped by King Philip III of France’s (1245–85) servants and attended – albeit
futilely24 – by his physicians. This proposes that the monarch himself had some
interest towards the health of his chevalier. Moreover, at some point Jehan was
visited by the widow of the king’s cellarer, who suggested making a vow to St
Louis and went on a pilgrimage for him.25 Thus Jehan remained a member of the
King’s household and his condition was by no means kept a secret, even from
those of a lower rank. A somewhat similar situation is described in the process
of Dauphine of Puimichel, the countess of Ariano. Her socia (companion,
partner) Bertranda Bartholomea testified about Francisca de Mari, a member
of the household of Sancha of Majorca (c. 1285–1345), the second wife of King
Robert of Naples. Francisca was cured of a severe headache and lack of hearing
and vision. King Robert had given Francisca medication and she stayed in the
royal castle throughout her infirmity, for Bertranda reportedly saw her there
several times during the five years the infirmity lasted.26
The abovementioned cases are all about a royal court close to the saint in
whose process the miracles were recorded, but there is no need to assume that the
situation would have been very different in the households of other members of
21
Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, 30. For cases with a wider
selection of witnesses for a noble person’s cure, see Actes anciens et documents concernant le
Bienheureux Urbain V pape, eds Joseph Hyacinthe Albanès and Ulysses Chevalier (1897),
289; Quellenstudien zur Geschichte der hl. Elisabeth, Landgräfin von Thüringen, ed. Albert
Huyskens (1908), 232.
22
Many noble women could stay in royal and aristocratic service after getting married,
when it was economically possible for them to delegate the tasks in their own household
to servants. Kim M. Philips, Medieval Maidens. Young Women and Gender in England,
c.1270–c.1540 (2003), 110.
23
Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, ed. Percival B. Fay (1931),
171–3.
24
On this topos in medieval miracles, see e.g. Christian Krötzl’s chapter in this volume.
25
It turns out she also gave a witness account in the original hearing. Ibid., 186–7.
26
Enquête pour le procès de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel Comtesse d’Ariano,
Apt et Avignon, 14 mai–30 octobre 1363, ed. Jacques Cambell (1978), 308.
royalty or the high nobility. Noble households are known to have nurtured poor
individuals with disabilities, but charity was most willingly shown to one’s peers,
and to those the donor was somehow responsible for.27 Thus, it is by no means
exceptional that the high nobility and rulers took care of their chronically ill or
disabled household members, just as did those of a lower social status.
One aspect that was spoken surprisingly little about in the narratives
concerning nobility is the care among one’s family. In the testimonies regarding
the healing miracles of other social groups, familial care and support is almost
self-evident, but the wealthier members of the nobility had servants for whom
the caring duties were attested.28 Moreover, many members of the nobility lived
in the company of other people than their immediate family in courts and
armies. I have come across only one case, in which a person titled nobilis was
reportedly taken care of by his wife. The man was called Johannes de la Garda,
and he was reportedly contractus (‘crippled’) for nine months, unable to move or
even feed himself without her help.29 There are some sporadic records of noble
or other elite women being taken care of by their parents during an impairing
condition.30 It seems plausible that the care-taking role of spouses, parents,
children and siblings depended highly on the noble person’s wealth and status.
A nobleman was hardly expected to personally nurse his wife,31 and if there were
no servants to take care of the task, extended family was most likely to be the
most natural choice.
As mentioned in the introduction, one of the explanations provided for the
lack of nobility’s healing miracles is the sensitivity to shame. The examples cited
above already demonstrate that even in the circles of high nobility, impairments
and chronic illnesses were not hidden, and ailing members of nobility were not
actively marginalized by their peers. But how about shame or embarrassment as
emotions experienced by the impaired persons or their family members?
Shame (verecundia) is a rarely expressed emotion in canonization testimonies,
but is referred to every now and then. Blacacius de Fayensa, the older brother of
Rixenda, a deaf daughter of a miles, stated that the whole household was sure the
condition was incurable and was ashamed of her deafness, wishing her rather
27
Farmer, Surviving Poverty, 85. See also Jonas Van Mulder’s chapter in this volume on
care-taking, community and nuclear family, esp. pp. 245–8.
28
See Jenni Kuuliala, ‘Love and Duty in the Time of Family Crisis. Physical Disability
and Marriage in Later Medieval (c. 1200–1500) Miracle Testimonies’, Mirator 14/2 (2013):
111–22.
29
Actes anciens, 288.
30
Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola, 322; Monumenta Romana episcopatus
Vesprimiensis, Vol. I, ed. Vilmos Fráknói (1896), 163–383, at 311–15.
31
On the nurturing role of women, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily
Life. See also Jonas Van Mulder’s chapter in this volume.
dead than alive.32 It is possible that the family’s socio-economic status as well
as gendered aspects indeed had influence on the brother’s notion. It has been
noted that especially in Mediterranean culture, men were constantly forced
to assert themselves to their equals.33 At the time of the inquiry, the father of
Blacacius and Rixenda was 60 years old, and as the miracle occurred some six
years earlier, he had already been quite old then by the standards of the time.34
Blacacius had undoubtedly been aware that he might soon be responsible for a
sister in a nuptial age,35 but who possibly was not an attractive match because of
her impairment – especially if the family was not notably wealthy.36
Some Italian canonization processes include cases portraying a girl’s facial
disfigurement as a reason for parental shame, and occasionally the problems
in marrying them off are emphasized.37 These witnesses were, however, Italian
urban townspeople, and thus their depositions cannot be used as proof of the
attitudes of the uppermost elite, but they rather refer to the differently disabling
aspects of physical conditions. It seems probable that facial disfigurements and
deafness indeed were among the greatest disparagements for marriage. That
these cases concern girls is hardly a surprise, as marriage was the most important
social role for them. It is known that there were more noblewomen looking for
32
Analecta Franciscana sive chronica aliaque varia documenta, Tomus VII. Processus
Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici O. F. M. Episcopi Tolosani, ed. Collegio
S. Bonaventura (1951), 154: et quod interdum vocabant eam ipse et alii familiares de domo
surdam […] et verecundabantur quod ita erat surda, ita quod magis vellent mortem quam
vitam eius. The case has been further discussed in Jenni Kuuliala, ‘Disability and Social
Integration. Constructions of Childhood Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-
Century Canonization Processes’. PhD diss. University of Tampere, 2013, 97–100, 200–207.
33
See Mary Flannery, ‘The Shame of a Rose: A Paradox’, in Guilt and Shame. Essays in
French Literature, Thought and Visual Culture, eds Jenny Chamarette and Jennifer Higgins
(2009), 51–70.
34
On medieval life expectancy, see Christian Krötzl, ‘“Sexaginta vel circa”. Zur
Wahrnehmung von Alter in hagiographischen Quellen des Spätmittelalters’, in Alterskulturen
des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Elisabeth Vavra (2008), 109–15.
35
In Mediterranean cultures, among families of high social standing, girls were
commonly in their late teens at the time of their first marriage, but could be married off as
early as the age of 12. Peasant girls were married off at a later age. See David Herlihy, Medieval
Households (2009), 103–7.
36
There is also one case in the miracula of Thomas Becket from 1170s, in which a
girl was deaf in one ear but had to hide her condition in order to get married. Materials for
the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol. I, ed. James Craigie Robertson
(1875), 446–7.
37
Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. Enrico Menestò (1984),
480–81; Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola, 236, 244; Fontes vitae S. Thomae
Aquinatis 1–4. Fasciculus IV, Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Neapoli, ed. M.-H. Laurent
(1911), 340–41.
husbands than vice versa,38 which may have made various infirmities a greater
hindrance for young noblewomen than men.
Impairing or disfiguring conditions could, however, also prevent a boy or a
man from fulfilling their social roles. The most concrete example of this are the
secular laws forbidding inheritance from the deaf and the mute, as well as the
mentally impaired, primarily because they were not legally capable of stipulation.
Some collections extended these rules to also concern those with mobility
problems.39 Such problems, however, appear surprisingly rarely in hagiographic
texts. In Dauphine of Puimichel’s process it is reported that the mother of a mute
boy of a noble origin grieved especially because he was the sole heir to his father’s
fortune.40 I have not come across another witness account where legal problems
would have been referred to, but in one of the miracles of Thomas Becket, the
landlord of a young, mute man was able to transfer his feudal possessions to
another’s ownership, because he could not mount opposition.41 How often such
problems were behind the worry of the elite witnesses is impossible to say, but the
regulations could make a son’s impairment, especially those affecting speech and
hearing or mental capacity, a severe problem for the whole family, particularly
if there were no brothers. Another legal restriction that could concern the elite
but was not limited to them are the rules concerning the physical faultlessness
of the clergy, occasionally hinted at in miracle narratives as well.42 Although
dispensations could be given for milder illnesses and deformations, priesthood
Bouchard, Strong of Body, 90.

38
Irina Metzler, ‘Reflections on Disability in Medieval Legal Texts: Exclusion –

39
Protection – Compensation’, in Disability and Medieval Law. History, Literature, Society,

ed. Cory James Rushton (2013), 19–53. Christian Laes suggests that for these reasons, in
Ancient Rome, lack of hearing and speech were more severe disabilities for the elite. Christian
Laes, ‘Silent Witnesses. Deaf-mutes in Greco-Roman Antiquity’, Class World 104, (2011):
451–73. On madness and law, see e.g. Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill,
Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England (2013).
40
Enquête, 90–91: De quo domina Katherina, eius mater, plurimum tristabatur, ex eo
presertim quia unicus filius sibi erat et heres universalis dicti quodam patris sui. Sorrow and
so-called ritualistic tears were an important aspect of imploring the saints, but naturally the
emotion often also rose from the difficult situation. Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles,
and Daily Life, 88. See also Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents, Endangered Children in
Medieval Miracles (1997), 151–4 and Christian Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations in Medieval
Scandinavia according to Scandinavian Miracle Collections’, Scandinavian Journal of History
14 (1989): 21–37.
41
Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. 1, 506–7.
42
As an example, in Louis IX’s miracles, a priest had a swelling on his face, but he
intended to cover it and keep on working in his profession. Being once compelled to reveal
his face to female pilgrims made him ashamed. Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Les Miracles de
Saint Louis, 88–9.
was unattainable for those with severe impairments, and a cleric who was injured
after being ordained was equally expected to search for dispensation.43
Although some earlier miracula portray noble beneficiaries who were
ashamed or felt themselves a burden, such notions are largely missing from
canonization testimonies. The only reference to this direction I have come
across is recorded in the testimony of a Franciscan brother and Professor of Law,
Ricardus de Insula, in Thomas Cantilupe’s hearing. Although not a nobleman,

Ricardus was undoubtedly of a high social standing, based on his education and
his brother’s position as a chancellor of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Ricardus had
warts covering his body all his life until he was cured in his early 20s. In his
testimony, he related how they caused him embarrassment (erubescentia) when
he was a student at the University of Orleans, making him shun the company of
others.44 Although the notions of the physical faultlessness of the clergy, as well
as the plans for his future, could add to his distress, the case is again readable
as an example of the social consequences of disfiguring conditions. Ricardus
covered his hands with gloves when possible, and, as a later example, the wife
of a Swedish armiger did not, according to one witness, have the courage to
eat in the presence of other people and always covered her face with a linen
cloth.45 Such recorded emotions may in part be a result of the demands of
canonization inquiries: because disfigurements did not necessarily have other
(physical) consequences, social problems were a way of illustrating the severity
of the situation. In the ideals concerning the appearance of a noble person, the
main emphasis was put on the hair, the face and the harmonious proportions
of the body. In later medieval Europe also other elite classes, such as upper-class
bourgeoisie and office-holders, were associated with a similar type of beauty,46
which undoubtedly lies in the background of these witness accounts.
For our current topic, two aspects cannot, however, be stressed too much.
Most members of nobility testifying about even severe physical impairments did
not refer to any shame or any other such emotions. And, as already shown by the
descriptions of facial disfigurement, this kind of shame or embarrassment was not
the exclusive right of the nobility, not even the elite.47 The failure to fulfil one’s
43
On priesthood, physical imperfections and dispensations, see e.g. Kirsi Salonen and
Jussi Hanska, Entering A Clerical Career at the Roman Curia 1458–1471 (2013), 9, 12, 103,
115–17, 122–9.
44
Ricardus’ testimony is on Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (hereafter
BAV), MS Vat. lat. 4015, fols 62v–64r.
45
Processus seu negocium canonizacionis B. Katerine de Vadstenis, ed. Isaak Collijn
(1942–46), 87–8.
46
Jaritz, ‘Young, Rich, and Beautiful’, 63–4.
47
This is also pointed out by Ronald Finucane in the preface of the newer edition of his
Miracles and Pilgrims, 4. He suggests that the expressions of shame in this context should be
further studied – a task still to be completed.
social roles could also trouble those with a lower social status, and occasionally
men who were unable to work because of their conditions, and had to beg instead,
expressed such emotions.48 These testimonies do not tell us anything about the
relative prevalence of feelings of shame or being a burden in different social classes,
but they show that such feelings were not limited only to individuals of high status.
War and Battle
A specific type of a miracle that is strongly connected with the nobility is the one
related to war and battle. However, a vast majority of miracle accounts portraying
warfare are about milites or armigeri (armour bearers) escaping imprisonment
after imploring a saint.49 As a rule, these accounts do not report bodily injuries
although they were supposedly common in such situations.50 This may in part
be explainable by the medieval warfare ideals. As a non-combatant, the captive
must not be tortured or killed, but at the same time he was supposed to be loyal
to his captor.51 On the other hand, in the cases when a prisoner was freed from
captivity, it is likely that the captor had broken the contractual obligation, and
thus the saint had a ‘right’ to interfere.52
Most of the rare miracle accounts describing injuries in warfare relate to
life-threatening ones.53 I have come across only two examples of milites left
with prolonged impairments after being wounded by an enemy. The first one
concerns Theobaldus de Beloczac,54 who was captivated together with Charles
of Blois in 1347. During the conflict, his right tibia was hit by an enemy’s sword
and he was later declared incurable by surgeons. Almost twenty years later, a
great pain struck him when he was in a village called Lamballe, where he was
eventually cured. Theobaldus’ testimony is exceptional as it does not specify the
consequences of his impairment.55 It is, however, probable that the leg bothered
See e.g. ‘Processus Apostolici, de B. Joanne Buono’, in Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto
48
orbe coluntur, eds J. Bollandus and others (1863–), Oct. IX, 874, 878.
49
On this hagiographic topos, see Michael Goodich, ‘The Miraculous Military Espace
in Canonization Documents’, in idem., Lives and Miracles of the Saints. Studies in Medieval
Hagiography (2004), Chapter XIX.
50
See also Metzler, A Social History, 32.
51
Goodich, Violence and Miracle, 126.
52
Ibid., 129.
53
See e.g. BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4025, fols 122r–22v; Actes Anciens, 205–6.
54
The case is on BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4025, fols 132r–33v.
55
The witnesses, however, tended to place the miracle at the most dangerous or
desperate time, which Theobaldus seems to have done. See Laura A. Smoller, ‘Defining
Boundaries of the Natural in Fifteenth-Century Brittany: The Inquest into the Miracles of
Saint Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419)’, Viator 28 (1997): 333–60, at 345.
him all that time, but he continued his activities. Theobaldus’ travel was
presumably administrative, because Lamballe was the capital of the territories of
the counts of Penthièvre.56
Another miles also cured by Charles of Blois of a prolonged war injury was
Gaufridus Budes. He was injured in his left knee and right arm when attempting
to free Saint-Michel from the siege of the English. With great difficulty,
Gaufridus finally managed to get back on a horseback. He made a vow to

Charles of Blois and to Notre Dame d’Uzel and started to gradually feel better.
During his long journey to Paris he was occasionally carried and also treated
with plasters.57 In Paris physicians examined his injuries and stated that they
were in a good state. He still remained in their care, and it took five more weeks
before he could walk.58 The duration of Gaufridus’ impairment was shorter than
that of Theobaldus’ and does not reveal much about the social standing of an
impaired miles. It, nevertheless, acts as an example of the support the soldiers got
from others in warfare, as well as the attempts to cure war injuries.
Our third example of disability acquired during warfare portrays a situation
highly uncommon in the canonization records. During the time of a battle
between the ruler of Milan, Galeazzo II Visconti (c. 1320–78), and the Marquis
of Montferrat ( John II, 1321–72), the people of Locarno were surrendering
to Galeazzo’s troops. A local nobleman called Jacobus de Farmentono kept
speaking against the conquerors, and as a punishment, they cut his tongue with
a sword, destroyed his eyes and cut off his fist. Jacobus remained in that state for
43 days, when a Franciscan brother Anthonius de Morosio told him to make a
vow to Urban V. From then on he was able to talk without a tongue.59
Mutilation as a punishment was not exceptional in later medieval Europe,
although how prevalent it actually was remains somewhat unclear. It appears
frequently in the depictions of battles that maiming the vanquished was a
powerful threat to other inhabitants of the conquered location.60 Despite
the miracle, Jacobus for sure continued his life with a disability, being blind
and lacking a hand. What his status was like later on can only be speculated.
Regrowth of amputated limbs is generally missing from medieval canonization
records, but that he remained also blind is somewhat surprising. As has already
been discussed, aural and speech impediments were among the most severe
ones in the late medieval society. Perhaps this is the reason why the miracle only
concerned Jacobus’ speech.
56
Monique Chauvin-Lechaptois, Les Comptes de la chatellenie de Lamballe (1977), 11.
57
This contradicts the common idea that attempting to treat the condition by earthly
medicine after making a votum could result in a relapse. Vauchez, La sainteté, 531.
58
BAV, MS Vat. Lat. 4025, fols 121r–21v.
59
Actes Anciens, 432–3.
60
Metzler, A Social History, 11–35.
No doubt an impaired knight’s economic situation and social network, as

well as the type of his injury, played a significant role for his future, and whether
he was able to support himself. As the case of Theobaldus de Beloczac shows,
an injury in a leg, which was among the most typical war injuries,61 did not
necessarily prevent a miles from continuing in his civil duties or even fighting.
The same may hold true with, for example, facial disfigurements, although they
may have been against the ideals of nobility’s appearance. Many soldiers were
also cured either fully or partly of their war wounds and continued fighting,62
and presumably for those able to do so, physical impairment was not necessarily
a great impediment – or disability.63 Moreover, although they are exceptional
persons, medieval Europe also saw kings and rulers who were severely ill or
impaired, and yet managed to retain their power.64
Established Narrations and the Ways of Veneration
When reading later medieval canonization dossiers, the low number of miracles
healing secular nobility’s prolonged physical conditions indeed catches the eye.
But does their scarcity reveal something essential about the nobility’s attitudes
to physical imperfections, or rather about the notions and attitudes concerning
sanctity and cultural narrations? After all, the documents of canonization
inquests are a result of the characteristics of a particular cult, the memories and
views of the witnesses, as well as the practicalities and preferences of canonization
hearings and those conducting them.
Although the word of the elite was valued, if we only look at the numbers,
the depositions of the members of the noble lay elite are also rare concerning the
Archaeological evidence shows that the other typical injuries included injuries in the
61
upper and lower arms, as well as the injuries in the fibula. Ibid., 38.
62
Ibid., 37–40.
63
Gesine Jordan has made this notion concerning the Carolingian society. Gesine
Jordan, ‘Kranke Herrscher und Herrschaftsanwärter in der Karolingerzeit’, in Homo debilis.
Behinderte – Kranke – Versehrte in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, ed. Cordula Nolte (2009),
243–62.
64
Despite being famously impaired by childhood leprosy, Baldwin IV (1161–85)
managed to rule Jerusalem and lead his army. Piers Mitchell, ‘Appendix. An Evaluation of the
Leprosy of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in the Context of the Medieval World’, in Bernard
Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs. Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem
(2000), 245–58. As another example, Jean of Bohemia (1296–1346) ruled his lands for years
as completely blind, also taking part in battles. Edward Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before
the Blind. Medieval Constructions of a Disability (2010), 194–202. For earlier examples, see
Jordan, ‘Kranke Herrscher’. See also Bianca Frohne’s discussion on Götz von Berlichingen in
this volume.
miracles of other people and, in many cases, the vitae of saints. As an example, in
Nicholas of Tolentino’s hearing, there were 371 witnesses, of whom only 17 can
be defined as noble, and the lemma nobilis appears in the whole process only 32
times.65 Similar tendencies are visible in most processes. Then again, it could also
be said that despite the rarity of noble miraculés, the number of elite witnesses is,
in the end, excessive compared with their proportion of the whole population.66
The selection of witnesses has not yet been studied very extensively,67 but there
were possibly various power networks working on a local level, which greatly
influenced whether noblemen and noblewomen ended up witnessing.
Some saints got more attention from the nobility than the others, so the
scarcity of their miracles is not all-encompassing. The processes of St Louis IX of
France, Dauphine of Puimichel and Urban V frequently portray nobility’s cures.
As a king, a countess and a pope of noble origin, they were all personally known by
many members of the nobility and their fama circulated at the uppermost levels
of society.68 As an example, in Dauphine’s hearing, 15 of the 68 witnesses held
a title referring to their noble status, and many of the miracle accounts include
narrations about other people belonging to nobility.69 In Urban V’s miracles,
the ones reported by nobility are typical of the processes of the time. Cures of
fever and the plague were common,70 for the epidemic had returned to ravage
Europe in 1374 and 1383–84, the southern parts of France being among the
worst hit areas.71 Otherwise, nobility reported a large variety of miracles from
captivations to fatal accidents, infertility and the resuscitations of children.72
65
Lett, Un procès de canonisation, 204.
66
See Jussi Hanska, ‘From Historical Event to Didactic Story. Medieval Miracle Stories
as a Means of Communication’, in Changing Minds. Communication and Influence in the
High and Later Middle Ages, eds Christian Krötzl and Miikka Tamminen (2013), 87–106.
67
Rare exceptions are Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life, 23–70 and
Lett, Un procès de canonisation, 140–160. See also Farmer, Surviving Poverty, 50–55; Gábor
Klaniczay, ‘Speaking about Miracles: Oral Testimony and Written Record in Medieval
Canonization Trials’, in The Development of Literate Mentalities in East Central Europe, eds
A. Adamska and M. Mostert (2004), 365–95, and Paolo Golinelli, ‘Social Aspects in Some
Italian Canonization Trials. The Choice of Witnesses’, in Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge
(2004), 165–80.
68
For example, one witness had heard Dauphine’s miracles being spoken about by the
(current) count and countess of Ariano, the socia of the mother of King Robert of Naples, as
well as two women who were members of the household of Sancha of Majorca. Enquête, 304.
69
Ibid., 279–80, 299–301, 361–70, 420–21, 425–9, 425, 510–12.
70
Actes anciens, 167–8, 201, 207, 233–4, 269, 287, 454.
71
See e.g. Ole Jørgen Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353. The Complete History
(2004), 96–109; for saints and plague, Goodich, Violence and Miracle, 117–20.
72
Actes anciens, 140–41, 150, 170–71, 149–50, 146–7, 205, 238, 239, 260, 269, 284,
290, 322, 328, 349, 360, 431–2, 444.
A significant number of these miracles are cures of acute conditions, but

that is a common trend, as other types of miracles than cures of prolonged
conditions became increasingly common in hagiographic sources of the later
medieval era, regardless of the social status of the miraculé.73 In the thirteenth
century, to obtain a cure as a result of a vow or with the help of portable relics
instead of making a pilgrimage became more common.74 If the nobility indeed
did not want to be associated with the ailing poor gathering at shrines, this was
no longer necessary.75 This tendency was, in fact, already visible earlier. Rachel
Koopmans notes that the sporadic cures of priests recorded in Thomas Becket’s
miracles in the late twelfth century had occurred in their homes.76
It is also possible that for the lay nobility, the veneration of saints was a more
personal feature of their lives than for other social groups, and therefore they
did not report miracles so eagerly. Concerning Louis IX of France, M. Cecilia
Gaposchkin writes that for the elite, who had known Louis IX or had otherwise
personal knowledge of him, his identity as the miracle-worker and their
miraculous experiences were much more personal than for the poor.77 The poor,
on the other hand, were those whose miracles – at least the recorded ones –
commonly happened at the shrine because they needed to have more witnesses,78
and thus ‘it was their experiences that created the culture of the miraculous at
St.-Denis’.79 It is possible that except in the case of saints such as Louis IX or
Dauphine of Puimichel, to increase one’s social standing by reporting miracles
was not necessary.80 The (wealthy) nobility may have had other ways to do
so, even in the religious sense, for example by buying relics, or funding the
construction work or decoration of churches and cathedrals.
Finally, it is worth emphasizing that miracle narratives were not separate
from other story-telling types, but social factors made members of nobility
report miracles about lawsuits, punished enemies, visions, or even cured falcons.81
This also explains the scarcity of the healing miracles of impaired knights and
Vauchez, La sainteté, 547.

73
Christian Krötzl, ‘Miracles au tombeau – Miracles à distance. Approches typolo-

74
giques’, in Miracle et Karama. Hagiographies médiévales compares, ed. Denise Aigle (2000),
557–76; Vauchez, La sainteté, 549–50.
75
See also Farmer, ‘The Beggar’s Body’, 167.
76
Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 176.
77
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, ‘Place, Status, and Experience in the Miracles of Saint Louis’,
Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes 19 (2010): 249–66.
78
Farmer, Surviving Poverty, 50–56.
79
Gaposchkin, ‘Place, Status, and Experience’, 252.
80
On the importance of actions in medieval religious life, see e.g. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
and Ville Vuolanto, ‘Religious Practices and Social Interaction in the Ancient and Medieval
World’, in Religious Participation in Ancient and Medieval Societies, ed. idem. (2013), 11–24.
81
Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 42.
soldiers. The glorious deeds depicted in well-known epics and romances were
not meant to describe actual medieval warfare, and besides disabling blows,
many other aspects of battles were left untold.82 Medieval literature portrays
warfare as a ‘clean, neatly defined activity with only two outcomes: instant death
or captivity, but […] no disabled soldiers returning home’.83 In other words, an
impaired knight simply did not belong to the imagery of warfare. All soldiers
were not, of course, noblemen, and most likely the common footmen suffered
even more injuries and were afterwards forced to beg for a living. While the
common imagery of warfare also undoubtedly had an effect on if or how their
experiences were retold, their poverty may provide an explanation why such
cures are absent from the miracles.
Conclusions
The sporadic cures of nobility do not allow far-reaching conclusions about the
ways physical impairments affected their status in their social sphere, or their
livelihood and future. Nevertheless, nothing in the canonization records of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries shows specific signs of their marginalization,
or feelings of shame or being a burden. How widely the accounts reflect their
lived realities is difficult to deduce, but because it was essential to prove the
hopelessness of the situation before the miraculous cure, it would be reasonable
to assume that had marginalization and shame been an essential part of the
experience of infirm members of the nobility, that would have ended up being
recorded more frequently. There was not one physical infirmity, nor was there
one impaired noble person. The effects of different conditions varied, and
undoubtedly the lived experience was also greatly influenced by one’s social
standing, gender and relations.
The rarity of the recorded cures of nobility’s prolonged infirmities cannot
be used as a proof of their attitudes towards physical weakness. Even if physical
infirmity was shameful for a person of a noble origin, there is no reason to
assume that a cured condition would, when reminisced even years or decades
later, be a cause of embarrassment. Nor could it put a person in danger of losing
their power, but it is known that being helped by a saint could increase a person’s
status in their community.84 Canonization records do not provide statistically
coherent data about the medieval society, but the selection of witnesses and the
82
Bouchard, Strong of Body, 117.
83
Metzler, A Social History, 41.
84
Laura A. Smoller, ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning in the Canonization of Vincent
Ferrer, 1453–54’, Speculum 73 (1998): 429–54, at 435.
proportions of different types of miracles are a result of the culturally established

ideas of the miraculous, as well as the requirements of the processes.
Chapter 5
Towards a Glossary of Depression
and Psychological Distress in Ancient
Roman Culture
Donatella Puliga
Introduction
The pain of living, malaise and existential distress are all diseases which have
come to be well recognized in contemporary societies. Not always easy to
identify, they only occasionally reveal their disturbing and ambiguous nature,
often hiding behind a system of attitudes that one would not hesitate to define
as ‘normal’. Undoubtedly over the centuries – and especially in relation to the
various socio-cultural and geographical conditions – the concept of infirmitas
has undergone significant changes and variations, perhaps mostly in reference
to the mind.1
I propose to investigate if and to what extent the condition that today we
generally link to the concept of ‘depression’ actually had its roots in Roman
society, and to what degree, if any, the most significant writers of Latin literature
were aware of the subtle ways which cause the soul to feel sad.
In ancient Roman culture, depression even had divine status. One of the
‘minor gods’2 was goddess Murcia who was so called because under her influence
man became murcidus, that is lazy and idle. If Murcia prevailed over Stimula
and Strenia (gods that, on the contrary, stimulated courage and activity) then
man fell into desidia. Paradoxically it is from St Augustine (354–430), a fierce
opponent of the religion of Rome, that we learn about this goddess: in De
Civitate Dei Augustine mentions Murcia and her power to make men slothful
and lethargic. Augustine wonders that the Romans assigned to separate gods
from every component of reality, even the most specific motions of the soul.
1
The problematic nature of the definition of ‘mood disorder’, ‘mental illness/
disability’, ‘disparity’ in general, is well analysed in C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose, ‘Mental
States, Bodily Dispositions and Table Manners’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity: Disparate
Bodies a capite ad calcem, eds Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose (2013), 17–44.
2
On the anthropological and religious status of these deities, see Micol Perfigli,
Indigitamenta. Divinità funzionali e funzionalità divina nella Religione romana (2004).
He then cites the goddess Agenoria who should incite man to action; the
goddess Stimula who was summoned for particularly demanding activities; and
the goddess Murcia who made man inactive and idle, that is murcidus. He added
that these deities were bestowed special public worship in a temple which was
located outside the Colline Gate (Porta Collina) in Rome.3
In fact, sometimes Murcia also played a positive role, at least from the point
of view of the established order. Murcia exerted her torpid influence on the
excesses of Bacchanalia, making lethargic the orgiastic fury of those who were
celebrating the rite. Not even Bacchus was able to resist the torpor caused by
Murcia, although in Rome the god Dionysus/Bacchus embodied enthusiasm,
wine and sublime rebirth. But Murcia was as subtle and irresistible a goddess as
the gloomy malaise she represented. She was, therefore, a goddess who embodied
depression rather than a deity to be invoked to dispel it.
According to ancient scholars the name Murcia was connected to the
adjective murcidus which, in turn, was connected with marcidus, a reference
to the image of a rotting soul. It was Maurus Servius Honoratus (late fourth
century–early fifth century) who formulated several hypotheses about the origin
of Murcia’s name:
[…] vallis autem ipsa ubi circenses editi sunt, ideo Murcia dicta est, quia
quidam vicinum montem Murcum appellatum volunt; alii, quod fanum Veneris
Verticordiae ibi fuerit, circa quod nemus e murtetis fuisset, inmutata littera
Murciam appellatam; alii Murciam a Murcido, quod est marcidum, dictam
volunt; pars a dea Murcia, quae cum ibi Bacchanalia essent, furorem sacri ipsius
murcidum faceret.4
The valley where the public games were held is called Murcia because it is near
mount Murcus, according to some; others say it was so called because there
was the temple to Venus verticordia, near a grove of myrtle (murtetis) trees,
and therefore by changing a letter, it was called Murcia. Others believe it is
called Murcia from murcidus, which is rotten. Some believe it is named after
the goddess Murcia who was thought to have extinguished the fury (murcidum
faceret) of the Bacchanalia, when they were held there.5
3
Augustine, De Civitate Dei, IV, 16: Miror autem plurimum, quod, cum deos singulos
singulis rebus et paene singulis motibus attribuerent, vocaverunt deam Agenoriam, quae
ad agendum excitaret, deam Stimulam, quae ad agendum ultra modum stimularet, deam
Murciam, quae praeter modum non moveret ac faceret hominem, ut ait Pomponius, murcidum,
id est nimis desidiosum et inactuosum, deam Streniam, quae faceret strenuum, his omnibus diis
et deabus publica sacra facere susceperunt, ‘Quietem’ vero appellantes, quae faceret quietum, cum
aedem haberet extra portam Collinam, publice illam suscipere noluerunt.
4
Servius Ad Aen. 8, 636.
5
Unless otherwise specified, the translations of the Latin texts are by the author.
Towards a Glossary of Depression and Psychological Distress 85
As already mentioned, Murcia – to whom the adjectives murcidus and

marcidus are associated – was the goddess that caused ‘rotting’, so the metaphor
for depression was visualized as a ‘rotting of the soul’. A significant reference to
this dimension is in De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus (99–c. 55 BCE),
where the concept of marcidum is presented in the corresponding verb form:
marceo. All things – says Lucretius, speaking with Nature’s words – are always
the same, and Nature cannot offer anything new to man, because everything
remains unchangeable even though the years have not rotted your body yet.6
Furthermore, then follows the invitation to man to wipe away his tears, to
make them disappear from his face, considering how much he has rotted while
enjoying the good things of life.7
But this is not the only metaphorical field employed by Latin culture to
try and make concrete the idea of the ethereal, elusive diseases of the psyche.
‘Old age’8 is, in fact, another way to describe the ‘ache of living’. The language
of the Romans also used the term veternus, connected with vetus and vetustas.
This is the case, for example, with Horace (Epistulae I, 8) who, in a sort of self-
denunciation, defines his own inner illness – precisely – as funestus veternus,
where the term morbus is implied. The concept seems similar to that of lethargus,
which appears also in Sermones II, 3.145. Our pathway will then take us to
the Augustan and early Imperial literature (in particular, Seneca’s Dialogi and
Epistulae ad Lucilium), in order to identify the actual spectrum of psychological
disorders which, after all, are not as ‘modern’ as generally assumed.9
The hypotheses to test are to what extent the condition that today we
associate with the concept of ‘depression’10 had its roots in Roman society and
to what degree, if any, Roman writers were aware of the subtle ways which cause
the soul to feel sad, and finally how writers such as Seneca or Cicero, who are
supposed to have suffered from bouts of depression, reflected their melancholic
state in the language they used. This chapter deals with only one of the terms for
depression used by the Romans: veternus.
6
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 3.945–7: eadem sunt omnia semper. / si tibi non annis
corpus iam marcet et artus/confecti languent, eadem tamen omnia restant.
7
Ibid., 3.955: aufer abhinc lacrimas, baratre, et compesce querellas. / omnia perfunctus
vitai praemia marces;/sed quia semper aves quod abest, praesentia temnis.
8
Jennifer Radden, ed., The Nature of Melancholy: from Aristotle to Kristeva (2000), 58.
9
The term ‘depression’, in the modern sense, was unknown to the Ancients. It was
formally introduced by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) towards the end
of the nineteenth century. As early as the first century BCE, Asclepiades of Bithynia had
identified phrenesis and tristitia as the two opposing features of what we now call ‘depression’.
10
Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern
times (1986); see also Clark Lawlor, From Melancholia to Prozac, A History of Depression
(2012).
The Method
The methods employed for the investigation are corpus linguistics and traditional
text analysis. Significant concepts and emotion words relating to the depressive
disorder11 are derived from the new DSM-V, the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association, published
in 2013.
The following signs and symptoms of depression are extracted from DSM-V:
• Persistent sad, anxious, or ‘empty’ feelings

• Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness or helplessness
• Irritability, restlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details and making decisions
• Insomnia, early-morning wakefulness or excessive sleeping
• Overeating, or appetite loss
• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
• Aches or pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that do not ease
even with treatment.
This list helped to select some significant Latin lemmas which were then
investigated. The main lemmas were: Desidia, Inertia,12 Languor, Maestitia,
Nausea, Oscitatio, Pigritia, Segnitia, Senium, Taedium and Veternus.
Here I focus my analysis on the term veternus, leaving aside, at least here, the
other words that belong to the semantic area of melancholy and depression. It
is interesting to note how the word veternus is used by different writers and the
shades of meaning it acquires in their works. The adjective veternus is formed in
a similar way to aeternus, sempiternus and so on.13 It is mainly used as a noun,
with the double meaning of ‘old age’ and ‘numbness’. The two meanings ‘old’
and ‘ancient’ of vetus and veternus seem also to convey the idea of ‘first year’,
‘year cycle’, which in farming identifies the new-born and/or the young animal
in comparison with adults more than a year old. Elsewhere, it also indicates what
11
Michael A. Taylor and Max Fink, Melancholia. The Diagnosis, Pathophysiology and
Treatment of Depressive Illness (2006).
12
The two apparently contrasting aspects of depression, that is elation and apathy, were
well synthesized by Horace in the expression strenua inertia, the oxymoron with which he
described his own depression (Hor., Ep. I, 11).
13
Cf. Alfred Ernout and Antoine Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue
latine: histoire des mots (1985); Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and other
Italic Languages (2008).
is ‘time-worn’. Significant in this respect is Varro’s opposition between vetus

vinum/novum vinum, where the sense is ‘what is old in contrast to what is new’:
in fact, the adjective vetus indicates the wine ‘of the previous year’ to distinguish
it from the new vintage:
Wine new and old I drink,

of illness new and old I’m cured.14
As to the suffix -ernus in veternus, it indicates the duration of time, the unfolding
of a phase. Similarly to hodiernus, meaning ‘related to hodie’ or ‘nocturnus’ related
to nox, veternus means ‘related to vetus’15 and therefore defines that particular
temporal phase when the ‘old’ fades into the ‘new’ and where an ‘end’ already
presupposes a new fresh ‘start’.
The Physical Quality of the Term Veternus
The meaning that is most frequently found is the one that concerns the area of
physicality: veternus is considered as a real disease of old age, a disease connected
to the presence of other elements (such as water, food, cold, heat) and the
interaction between them, depending on different contexts.
But let us consider how Plautus (250–c. 184 BCE) uses the word. The term
veternus appears for the first time in Menaechmi and from this first occurrence
the intrinsic link between its two main meanings of old age and disease is
evident. The union of these two semantic fields is clear in the passage below
(taken from scene VI, act 5 and the last of the play): the dialogue takes place
between a senex (old man) and the medicus (physician), two characters marked
by a real reversal of roles16 as it is the physician who asks the old man questions
about the disease suffered by another patient. The doctor then asks the old man
about the nature of the patient’s symptoms, questioning precisely whether he
suffers from veternus or intercutaneous liquids.17
14
Novum vetus vinum bibo / novo veteri morbo medeo. According to Varro, De Lingua
Latina, VI, 21, these lines were chanted during the Meditrinalia (on 11 October), the wine
festivals devoted to Jupiter.
15
This relationship was already known to the ancient grammarians, cf. Priscianus
(Gramm. II, 81, 10): ‘vetus’ … ‘veternus facit’.
16
It is not by chance that Menaechmi is based on two twin brothers’ mistaken identities,
and for this reason has always been considered as the lucky prototype of ambiguitas, and of
all the ‘comedies of errors’.
17
Plautus, Menaechmi, 889–93: MEDICUS: Quid esse illi morbi dixeras? Narra, senex./
Num larvatust aut cerritus? Fac sciam./Num eum veternus aut aqua intercus tenet? SENEX:
Quin ea te caussa duco ut id dicas mihi/ atque illum ut sanum facias.
In addition to the combination with old age, the most striking association is
the one with ‘dropsy’. This connection, which will later have significant success
and will turn into a real identification of the two diseases, old age and dropsy, in
the tradition of Late Antiquity (as with Servius),18 cannot apparently be clearly
explained. It seems, though, rooted in the current language of Plautus’ time, the
author who, as we know, mainly uses sermo familiaris.
Returning to our veternus, the term is used here to express a state of drowsiness
and weakening of the faculties, a type of pathology typically senile (hence the
union of the two semantic areas).
In a fragment attributed to the same author, Plautus, the word is likened
to the verb sleep, perhaps to indicate a state of perpetual sleep that the subject
wants to avoid. Probably here the author considers veternus as a state of physical
inactivity rather than relating it to the psyche, but still a sort of ‘disease’ to be
fought by means of opus facere.19 Veternus is then a disease much to be feared and
to which activity is to be preferred.20
In the same years as Plautus, Cato (234–149 BCE) uses a combination of
veternus and ‘drinking’: in an oration in which he describes the tribune Marcus
Caelius, in fact, he mentions this ‘disease of drinking and sleeping’ and the
passage in question is also quoted in full in Noctes Atticae by Aulus Gellius.21 In
a similar way to the man who cannot be silent because he is affected by a disease
linked to verbal excitement, so the veternosus suffers from the disease of drinking
and sleeping.22 The same connection is highlighted in a fragment of uncertain
date by Cato himself:
Veternosus quam plurimum bibit, tam maxime sitit.23
Those afflicted with veternus the more they drink,

the more thirsty they are.
See below, p. 95.

18
Plautus, Fr., 1 vv. 3–4 Lind.: Opus facere nimio quam dormire mavolo: veternum metuo.
19
According to Andrea Aragosti, Frammenti Plautini dalle commedie extra Varroniane (2009),
82–3, the fear of punishment is made explicit indirectly through a metonymic wording:
veternum counts as laziness which causes a guilty attitude and, hence, entails punishment.
This would be a characteristic trait of the slave’s Weltanschauung.
20
According to A. Aragosti, Frammenti Plautini dalle commedie extra Varroniane,
Bologna 2009, 82 f., the fear of punishment is made explicit indirectly through a metonymic
wording: veternum counts as laziness which causes a guilty attitude and, hence, entails
punishment. This would be a characteristic trait of the slave’s Weltanschauung.
21
Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, I.15.9.
22
Cato, Orationes, XXII, fr. 81: Numquam tacet, quem morbus tenet loquendi tamquam
veternosum bibendi atque dormiendi.
23
In Paul. Fest., 369M.
This drinking disease is almost certainly a reference to dropsy: the accumulation

of fluid in the body cavities which gives the impression of a person abnormally
swollen with water, as if the person had drunk too much. If so, here some sort
of identification of the two diseases can be observed, and such an association
may have generated some confusion between the two terms. In fact, in the very
fragment above, the following expression is also reported: veternosum hydropicum
intellegi voluit (which suggests that the condition of being in a state of sleepiness
or drowsiness [veternosus] is understood to be the same as having dropsy).
Cold and Heat as the Causes of the Disease
In Cicero’s works (106–43 BCE), the term veternus occurs twice in Epistulae
ad familiares and in both cases it is connected to the term civitas. It is clear that
here Cicero wants to talk about a disease that affects the city, making it prey to
laziness, cowardice and inertia. Both passages deal with veternus civitatis, that is,
a ‘depressive’ disease of a State, which is characterized by the elements of frost
and stiffening: a kind of freezing that surrounds the city.24
It is important to note the use of terms which refer to a condition of cold
(such as congelasse, conglaciat, frigore, frigescimus): the lexical area of frigiditas
reinforces even more the concept of veternus in the sense of drowsiness and,
metaphorically, of a numbed reason which prevents action and which might be
generated by cold humours.
Veternus also Afflicts Animals
In Columella’s De Re Rustica (4–70 CE), however, the drowsiness caused by

veternus is no longer associated with cold but rather with the summer sun that
weakens cattle and makes them lazy. Even animals, Columella says, suffer from
veternus: in the summer heat, when they are driven out to pasture, they are
overcome by drowsiness and refuse food.25
24
Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, II, 13, 3,1: Erat in eadem epistula ‘veternus civitatis’.
Gaudebam sane et congelasse nostrum amicum laetabar otio. Extrema pagella pupugit me tuo
chirographo. Ibid., VIII, 6, 4, 3: Curioni nostro tribunatus conglaciat. Sed dici non potest quo
modo hic omnia iaceant. Nisi ego cum tabernariis et aquariis pugnarem, veternus civitatem
occupasset. Si Parthi vos nihil calfaciunt, nos [nihil] frigore frigescimus.
25
Columella, De Re Rustica, VII, 10, 4: Solet etiam universum pecus aegrotare, ita ut
emacietur nec cibos capiat productumque in pascua medio campo procumbat et quodam veterno
pressum somnos aestivo sub sole captet.
For the first time, this kind of disease is attributed to the animal world; in truth
it does not seem that Columella uses it to indicate lethargy:26 in a passage from
Book VII, veternus is considered even a possible cause of death of the livestock
which, if not ‘aroused’, is likely to consenescere (‘wear out’) and extinguere (‘die’).
In short, it is not good practice to spur the animals when they are particularly
worn out. It is better to have them do moderate exercise to rouse them from their
torpor, since excessive inactivity can lead them to death.27 Perhaps, the meaning
here is very close to ‘comatose’, but attributed for the first time to animals.
From the World of Animals to the World of Plants
One more particular meaning to note is the one that connects veternus to ‘dirt’,
later taken up by Apuleius (125–70 CE) and Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE).28 When
writing about vines, Columella associates veternus with the term situs to indicate
dirt, rot and mildew:
Iam vero muscus, qui more compedis crura vitium devincta conprimit situque et
veterno macerat, ferro destringendus et eradendus est.29
Furthermore, the moss binds and compresses the bottom part of the vines like
chains, it softens them with its mouldiness and old dirt, and must be removed and
scraped off with iron.
The highest occurrence of the word veternus is in Pliny the Elder’s work (23–79
CE). In his Naturalis Historia, he uses the term in the fields of zoology and
botany. One example is an excerpt from Book VIII, dedicated to terrestrial
animals: talking about bears the author uses the term to indicate their lethargy:
Primis diebus bis septenis tam gravi somno premuntur, ut ne vulneribus quidem
excitari queant. Tunc mirum in modum veterno pinguescunt.30
During the first fortnight of hibernation, the animals sleep so soundly that not even
wounds would arouse them. This is a time when they fatten disproportionately
because of the veternus.
As Pliny does, instead. See above, p. 86.

26
Columella, De Re Rustica, VII, 5, 3: Nam quem ad modum fessas morbo pecudes

27
vehementer agitare et extendere non convenit, ita conducit mediocriter exercere et quasi torpentis
excitare nec pati veterno consenescere atque extingui.
28
See below, p. 91.
29
Columella, De Re Rustica, IV, 24, 6.
30
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, VIII, 127.
This meaning of lethargy might be connected with the more ‘technical’ term
‘coma’, already present in some of Plautus’ translations31 and close to Columella’s;
in both cases it indicates that there is a long idle state and it is this very meaning
that is probably taken up by Pliny in Book XX, the one devoted to botany.
Among the healing properties of horseradish, the benefits that this plant
provides to those who have entered a coma are also listed:
… [prodest] livori vero recenti corticem cum melle, veternosis autem quam
acerrimos mandere, semenque tostum, dein contritum cum melle suspiriosis.32
So, the people suffering from veternus would benefit from eating horseradish
when it is particularly hot.
Even more interesting is the use of the same term with the same meaning in
Book XXIV where Pliny focuses on the medicinal properties of herbs:
Veterno liberat quae exedum vocatur.33
The plant called exedum dispels lethargy.
In this case, the particular meaning of veternus is even more emphasized by the
term used to indicate the curative plant: exedum. The etymology of the word is
probably exedere: ‘corrode’, and in fact we know that plants with caustic effects
were prescribed in the treatment of comatose states. On the other hand, if coma
is similar to hibernation, since inactivity is common to both, it is equally true
that Pliny clearly distinguishes the two ‘diseases’. A remedy for melancholia is
calf ’s dung; for lethargy and coma the remedies range from the excrescence on
the leg of an ass, goat’s horns or goat’s hair and wild boar’s liver.34
From this excerpt from Book XXVIII (focused on the medical uses of animal
products), it appears that Pliny, unlike other authors, clearly distinguishes
lethargici from veternosi (although both are given the same medicine), perhaps
because the latter, as well as idleness due to long sleep, also display idle brains.
31
For example, G. Faranda’s translation, in Titus Maccius Plautus, Commedie (2007).
32
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, XX, 14.
33
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, XXIV, 115.
34
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, XXVIII, 97. Melancholicis fimum vituli in vino decoctum
remedio est. Lethargicos excitat asini lichen naribus inlitus ex aceto, caprini cornus nidor aut
pilorum, iocur aprunum; itaque et veternosis datur.
A Senile-type Disease
The connection between the concepts of veternus and vetus is clearly evident
in Terence’s Eunuchus (185–159 BCE), stating ‘Hic est vietu “vetu” veternosus
senex, colore mustelino’.35 The reference, therefore, is to a veternosus (old man)
who has the colour of a weasel. Of particular interest is the juxtaposition with
mustelino as the weasel has become the archetypal figure of the midwife from
the myth of Galanthis (Galanthis was the maid who allowed Alcmene to give
birth to Hercules by deceiving the goddesses of childbirth and, in punishment,
was transformed into a weasel, the pet that in Antiquity enjoyed a privileged
position in the home.) The weasel is usually connected with the world of
childbirth and all things to do with a new baby36 and it is therefore remarkable
to see the combining of terms which refer to two opposed moments of life: birth
and old age.
According to Catullus (84–54 BCE) the condition of veternus is a sort of
pre-death, of old age that affects the soul and that plunges the body, not yet
old through age, into lethargy. As an example of the lethargic state Catullus
in fact offers the image of an old man who sees and hears nothing. Catullus
describes an attitude of surprised confusion typical of the old man, who does
not sense anything nor even know what he is himself because he is completely
disoriented.37 The poet wishes that a leap into muddy water from the top of a
rickety bridge would awaken this fellow citizen and, in fact, Catullus asks the
people of Cologne to throw the citizen off a bridge of the city to see if the water
will ‘wake him up’ from his state of ‘torpor’.38
It is not clear in what sense the term veternus is used here: either the character
in question is an old individual suffering from apathy and (also sexual) inactivity,
or his indolence comes rather from his foolishness.39 If we accept the first
hypothesis, caenum is emphasized in a connection with water rather than mud:
a reference, perhaps, to the cold water bath indicated as a cure for lethargy by
Celsus and, consequently, to the area of frigiditas mentioned above. Others solve
the question by considering the scene a simple ironical reminiscence of ancient
Terence, Eunuchus, 688.

35
On these issues, Maurizio Bettini’s contribution, Nascere. Storie di donne, donnole,

36
madri ed eroi (1998), is essential.

37
Catullus, Carmina, 17, vv. 17 & ff.: sed velut alnus/in fossa Liguri iacet suppernata
securi,/tantundem omnia sentiens quam si nulla sit usquam;/talis iste meus stupor nil videt,
nihil audit,/ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit.
38
Ibid., 23–5: Nunc eum volo de tuo ponte mittere pronum,/si pote stolidum repente
excitare veternum,/et supinum animum in gravi derelinquere caeno.
39
See e.g. Luciano Paolicchi, ‘Introduzione’, in Gaius Valerius Catullus, I carmi, ed.
Luciano Paolicchi (1998).
rituals related to supposed human sacrifices.40 But it is interesting to note that

lethargy is associated not only with the numbness of the old man, but also to
the oblivious sleep of the child. Catullus associates the torpor of the senex with
the unconscious sleep of the puer when he describes the stolidus veternus as an
individual who is ‘totally vapid, as unconscious as a two-year-old child sleeping
on his father’s trembling forearm’.41
The use of the term veternus in the sense of ‘old, ancient’ is also evident in
Statius (40–96 CE): in a passage of the Thebais he speaks of a forest, well known
because of its old age:
Sternitur extemplo veteres incaedua ferro/silva comas, largae qua non opulentior
umbrae/Argolicos inter saltusque educta Lycaeos/extulerat super astra caput:
stat sacra senectae/numine, nec solos hominum transgressa veterno/fertur avos,
Nymphas etiam mutasse superstes/Faunorumque greges.
Straightaway a wood whose ancient foliage never knew the axe is felled, then
which none richer in lavish shade was raised in the glades of Argolis and Lycaeus
to lift his head above the stars.
It stood sacred in the majesty of age, said not only to surpass men’s ancestors
in antiquity, but to have seen generations of Nymphs and Fauns come and go.42
In this case, the term loses any connection with the ‘medical’ context, indicating
only the longevity of the forest, but this apparent semantic simplification ceases
to exist as early as the second century CE, when the word goes back to being the
crossroads of a complex set of meanings related to infirmitas, which we will try
to clarify below, at least in part.
Semantic Variety: from Food, to Lethargy, to Coma
An example of this semantic variety is present in Apuleius. He uses the word

in question, veternus, with three totally different meanings. In Book IX of
Metamorphoses the protagonist tells us about the aesthetic appearance of the
mules that are in the manger with him. The mules were in a very bad shape: their
chests were in poor condition because of the rubbing of the rope, their flanks
40
On this subject, see Katariina Mustakallio, Sive deus sive dea. La presenza della
religione nello sviluppo della società romana, trans. Donatella Puliga (2013), 42–4.
41
Catullus: Carmina 17, vv. 12–13: insulsissimus […], nec sapit pueri instar/bimuli
tremula patris dormiens in ulna.
42
Statius, Thebais, VI, 90–96, ed. and trans. D.R. Shackleton Bailey, LCL (2003).
were bare to the bone because of whipping and the entire hide was rough and
scabby with decay.43
Here, veternus indicates a sort of excessive thinness and the context in
which the term is inserted also refers to the idea of ‘filth’ already mentioned in
Columella (particularly noteworthy is the use of macies which also occurs in
Seneca). In Book X, however, ‘coma’ occurs again in that particular semantic
sense, perhaps also present in Plautus (and Columella and Pliny, though related
to the animal world). Veternus is described as an illness in which the individual
is somehow inextricably enmeshed.44
As a matter of fact, a contradiction can be observed here: if the individual in
question is in a state of unconsciousness he can certainly not manage gestire se
subtrahere (‘desire to escape’) from the condition or, at least, does not have the
ability to manifest this desire (and in fact, some translators, such as Hanson,
propose the more generic translation of ‘slow decay’). However, it is much more
likely that veternus here indicates a true comatose state. The very definition of
morbus inextricabilis aims to indicate a syndrome that leaves no way out, an
‘inexplicable illness’ that seems to have no remedy: the sufferer has nothing else to
do but end his life. Another occurrence is located in one more work by Apuleius,
Florida. Metaphorically, the sword keeping its sheen through usage is contrasted
with inactivity which generates sloth, and sloth which generates veternus.45
Although placed at the top of this sort of climax, veternus does not seem
to have such ‘extreme’ meaning as ‘comatose’. It is likely that the author, while
talking about the use of the human voice and of exercise in general, uses the term
here to mean a state of total inertia since, as the loss of good habits generates
laziness, similarly laziness generates a kind of chronic lethargy.
Veternus also Afflicts Pueri
Another occurrence of the term is in Aulus Gellius (125–80 CE). Once again the
semantic areas involved are those of ‘food’ and ‘sleep’, but this author is the first to
associate explicitly the veternus disease to the young. Here the term is linked to
elucus (a lemma of probable Greek origin that indicates ‘numbness’) with which
43
Apuleius, Metamorphoses, IX, 13: costas perpetua castigatione ossium tenus renudati,
ungulas multivia circumcursione in enorme vestigium porrecti totumque corium veterno atque
scabiosa macie exasperati.
44
Ibid., X, 9: Furcifer iste, venenum praesentarium comparare sollicitus centumque aureos
solidos offerens pretium, me non olim convenerat, quod aegroto cuidam dicebat necessarium, qui
morbi inextricabilis veterno vehementer implicitus vitae se cruciatui subtrahere gestiret.
45
Apuleius, Florida, XVII, 8: Profecto ut gladius usu splendescit, situ robiginat, ita vox
in vagina silentii condita diutino torpore hebetatur. Desuetudo omnibus pigritiam, pigritia
veternum parit.
it forms a kind of synonymic pair in the technical-medical sense of ‘suffering

from lethargy’. The mention of pueri is certainly a notable innovation, which,
moreover, contrasts the original meaning found in Plautus, who underlined the
juxtaposition of the term with the world of senile diseases. If young children
who have not yet reached the age of development eat and sleep excessively they
may become affected by insomnia or lethargy, with the result that their bodies
will not reach full development.46
An Inner Sickness
Servius, in his commentary on a passage by Virgil,47 defines veternus as an ‘inner

sickness that makes men lazy’ (morbus intercus […] qui homines efficit pigros). The
emphasis is on the idea of no activity and the state of torpor that such inactivity
involves, a sort of lethargic drowsiness which can only be escaped by avoiding
sleep and concentrating on doing, facere opus, as we also learn from the fragment
by Plautus.48
We are faced with a kind of summary of the semantics that revolve around
veternus (except for the connection with old age, perhaps Gellius’ legacy), and
that brings us back once again to the first author analysed, Plautus:
VETERNO pigritia: nam veternum dicitur morbus intercus, id est ὕδροψ, qui
homines efficit pigros … .
VETERNO otio, quia plerumque otiosos solet hic morbus incessere: Plautus in
Addicto: ‘opus facere nimio quam dormire mavolo, veternum metuo’.49
VETERNUS = Laziness: an internal disease, dropsy, that makes people lazy is

called veternus.
VETERNUS = Idleness: because generally this disease affects mostly idle people.
Plautus in his Addictus: ‘I’d rather be very active than sleep, I fear the veternus’.
A peculiarity is the use of the term intercus, indicating a subcutaneous, internal

disease: though arguably the disease continues to be considered in a physical
46
Gellius, Noctes Atticae, 4, XIX, 1: Pueros inpubes conpertum est, si plurimo cibo
nimioque somno uterentur, hebetiores fieri ad veterni usque aut eluci tarditatem, corporaque
eorum inprocera fieri minusque adolescere.
47
Commentarius in Vergilii Georgica, I, 124.
48
See above, p. 88.
49
Commentarius in Vergilii Georgica, I,124,1.
sense, this adjective allows us to open a window on the other main semantic area,
that of the mind.
Veternus as Maladie de l’âme

The indissoluble link between the world of the psyche and that of the body,
widely acknowledged by modern science, already had a place in the speculation
of the ancients. As stated by Jackie Pigeaud, the disease of the soul combines in
itself the medical field (it is a disease) and the philosophical one (it is assumed
that the soul may be sick just like the body and its affliction becomes an indicator
of a real state of the mind).50 This linking is visible in three of the greatest writers
of ancient Rome: Virgil, Horace and Seneca. With them, veternus becomes
decidedly the maladie de l’âme. In the first book of Georgics, in the excerpt
commented on by Servius examined above, Virgil (70–19 BCE) tells us about
veternus as a state of indolence characteristic of the golden age, but then crushed
by Jupiter himself. Father Jupiter, then, did not want husbandry to be too easy
for men, and taught them the art of agriculture so that having practical problems
to face they would not fall into deep lethargy, or veternus.51
Once again the term veternus has a negative connotation, emphasized by
the contrast with man’s labour and his artes (concepts that have a positive value
here and that can help us better understand the meaning of this passage). Of
course, the whole of the first book of Virgil’s work revolves around the theme of
agricultural work as the endless struggle for survival and almost a condemnation.
Although there is no idea of finality or providence, the termination of the Golden
Age is due to a divine decision apparently hostile to man, but, in reality, there
is a good reason for Jupiter’s intervention: veternus. The state of nature seems
characterized by a kind of torpid innate laziness, a disease of the spirit which the
omnipotent father ended by abolishing the era in which nature spontaneously
gave man everything he needed, without the need for curae or artes. Hence the
necessity for work which, although tiring, motivates man to hone his technical
skills and his thoughts, a sort of incentive given in response to a state of torpor
that was not only physical but also mental.
This frame of mind finds its most complete expression with another poet:
no ancient author succeeds in depicting the sense of unease connected to the
concept of veternus better than Horace (65–68 BCE). Symptoms of depression
Jackie Pigeaud, La maladie de l’âme: étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la
50
tradition médico-philosophique antique (2006).

51
Virgil, Georgicon Liber, I, 121–4: Pater ipse colendi/haud facilem esse viam voluit,
primusque per artem /movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda / nec torpere gravi passus sua
regna veterno.
are also evident in one of his Letters, the one addressed to Celsus Albinovanus,
Nero’s secretary. Horace confesses to being a victim of a dark malaise, a sort of
‘lethal sloth’, but it remains a vague disease: there is a real inability to grasp the
cause of this severe mental impairment that results in instability, inconsistency,
restlessness, paralysis of will and intolerance for any attempt to remedy it.
Moreover, this disease seems to be fuelled by the awareness of impending old age
and the inexorable fate that hangs over every man. Indeed, Horace never seems
able to cure his own fear of death and the perennial restlessness in which he lives
is also seen in the fast, relentless pace that characterizes this epistle. He describes
himself as dissatisfied, ill-disposed to the care of doctors and friends and always
torn between the awareness of a chance of recovery and the inability to reach it.
Horace calls such a state veternus funestus. It makes him ventosus, that is, fickle
and fleeting like gusting air. All this causes the poet intense agony. In Horace’s
representation, veternus is not necessarily inactivity, as in the example from
Virgil, but rather the state of those who do not have the strength to do what
needs to be done; it is letting oneself go, an empty, aimless, incoherent activity,
a disease of the soul, which, being funestus, is a prelude to death, and therefore is
associated with features of old age, such as physical weariness and sterility.52
Thus funestus veternus translates here into a sense of unfulfilled anxiety that
leads to an inability for the author to act and live, the same existential angst
which would afflict many of the great nineteenth-century poets and which
would become known as spleen, a term that indicates meditative sadness
and melancholia:
Si quaeret quid agam, dic multa e pulchra minantem vivere nec recte nec
suaviter, haud quia grando contuderit vitis oleamve momorderit aestus, nec quia
longinquis armentum aegrotet in agris, sed quia mente minus validus quam corpore
toto nil audire velim, nil discere, quod levet aegrum; fidis offendar medicis, irascar
amicis, cur me funesto properent arcere veterno quae nocuere sequar, fugiam quae
profore credam, Romae Tibur amem, ventosus Tibure Romam.53
If he asks how I am, say despite all good

Intentions, I live a life that’s neither good nor sweet:
Not that hail’s crushed my vines, heat blighted the olives,
Nor that my herds fall ill with disease in far pastures:
But much less healthy in mind than I am in body
I choose not to listen or learn how to ease my ills:
Quarrelling with true doctors, irritable with friends,
52
In the expression mollis inertia, which occurs in Horace’s Epodi I, 14, 1, the adjective
mollis brings to mind slowness, laziness, and slackness, the typical traits of the depressed.
53
Horace, Epistulae I, 8, 9–10.
Who come running to ward off some fatal lethargy:

I chase what harms me, flee what I know will help:
Restless, wanting Tibur in Rome, Rome at Tibur.
Seek what has harmed me, shun what looks of use,
Town-bird at Tibur, and at Rome recluse.54
We are presented with an authentic self-portrait of the poet affected by veternus:

despite his best intentions his life is shrouded by a feeling of death, which makes
him unhappy, irritable and short-tempered, even though there are no objective
reasons to justify such a state. A constant longing to be elsewhere is the trait that
marks his entire existence.
Pomponius Porphyrion (second century CE) uses, instead, the Greek word
for lethargia to try and explain what Horace meant:
Ad Albinovanum Celsum, cui indicat animi se aegritudine laborare, neque

quicquam eorum, quae recta essent, sibi placere.
VETERNO: ‘ληθαργία55
To Celso Albinovano, to whom he explains how he is suffering from a disease of

the soul and says that he does not take pleasure in those things it would be right
to enjoy.
VETERNO: lethargy
Horace was the first to specify that this sort of depressive state was in his own
mind (mens) more than in his body (corpus) and from now on veternus becomes
a real disease of the soul. It is given much attention in Seneca’s precepts (4 BCE–
65CE).
Seneca uses the adjective veternus when he criticizes ‘those who vomit on
an empty stomach while fattening their bodies, and with a worn out, dull soul’
[isti ieuni vomitores, quorum corpora in sagina, animi in macie et veterno sunt.56],
and he attributes the condition of veternus to a ‘soul full of sorrow’.57 In addition
to Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, the term veternus occurs in Seneca’s De ira, a
dialogue that deals with a disease that blurs both the mind and reason. The spirit
‘Horace: The Epistles’, trans. by A.S. Kline (2005), accessed January 15, 2015, http://
54
www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceEpistlesBkIEpVIII.htm.
55
Pomponius Porphyrion, Commentum in Horati Epistulas, I, 8, 10.
56
Ad Lucilium Epistularum moralium libri, 10, 88, 19.
57
Ibid., 19, 115, 7.
of veternosi, Seneca says, is delicate enough to be comparable to those sick bodies

that are sensitive to the slightest touch.58
While in the excerpts quoted from the Epistles the concept of veternus is linked
to that of thinness and consumption (the mental condition of animi in macie et
veterno is compared and contrasted to the physical condition of vomitores), in
De Ira the concept is linked to that of unhappiness. In both passages the word
animus is used. From these two excerpts it is evident how the process of evolution
of the term has been brought to completion: this ‘disease’ is now considered
independently, no longer linked to old age or dropsy or any other observable
state. With Horace and Seneca we are witnessing the real internalization of this
syndrome which becomes a sort of modus vivendi. Maybe the reference here is to
a hectic lifestyle that drains us and makes us anxious, a condition which can only
be remedied with meditation and recollection, what the author himself calls
contemplatio sui, a self-contemplation that leads to inner perfection. Veternus
and the sense of unease typify the anxious soul, overwhelmed by worries, and
this analysis is evidence of Seneca’s great originality and of his extraordinary
relevance to our modern life.
This last semantic shift towards an ethical and moral vision well lends itself
to conclude this digression on the concept of veternus in the sense of a ‘disease
of the soul’. We can end these first steps of the journey into melancholy and
depression in the Roman world by quoting some lines of Horace:
caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt.

strenua nos exercet inertia; nauibus atque
quadrigis petimus bene uiuere. Quod petis, hic est,
est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus.59
Those who cross the seas change air, not heart.

A busy idleness occupies us; in ships and chariots
We try to find the good life. What you seek is here
at Ulubre, as long as your heart is peaceful.
Ulubre was a tiny village in Latium, notable only for the croaking of its frogs.
It would be a futile exercise to replace the ships and chariots of the past
with modern planes and cars: Horace’s immortal lines do not need a veneer
of modernity.
58
Seneca, De ira, I, 20, 3: Iracundia nihil amplum decorumque molitur; contra mihi
videtur, veternosi et infelicis animi imbecillitatis sibi conscia, saepe indolescere, ut exulcerata et
aegra corpora, quae ad tactus levissimos gemunt.
59
Hor. Ep. 1, 11.
Conclusion
The aim of this contribution is to offer a first step into the complex anthro-
pological-linguistic analysis of the ailments linked to depression in the Roman
world. The term veternus seems to be a good starting point because it embodies
the idea of ‘mal de vivre’ combined with the anthropological horizon of old age.
In fact the term throws light on a specific dimension of Roman culture but at
the same time it is not alien to modern and contemporary culture: depression
entails a feeling of ‘death in life’, typical of old age but also present whenever
existential anxiety piercingly intrudes upon literature and life.
PART II
Societal and Cultural Infirmitas

Chapter 6
The Crusader’s Stigmata:
True Crusading and the Wounds of
Christ in the Crusade Ideology of the
Thirteenth Century
Miikka Tamminen
Introduction
The wounds of Christ and the marks of these wounds, the stigmata, have had
various meanings at different times, in different contexts. The meaning of the
stigmata in the crusading context is fairly unknown and has been examined
only by few modern scholars.1 The present chapter will consider the motif of
stigmata in the crusade ideology and crusade propaganda. I will explore how the
crusade preachers utilized the theme in their sermons, focusing particularly on
the imitation of the Passion of Christ and on the concept of infirmity related
to this theme. What was the relationship between Christ’s sufferings and the
crusader’s sufferings, or the wounds of Christ and the torment of the crusader?
How was the human condition of infirmity used in the crusade ideology of the
thirteenth century?
The imitatio Christi was a prevalent phenomenon in the thirteenth-century
society and an important ideal in crusade ideology. For the crusaders the
imitation of Christ could mean several things. The participants of crusades were
to follow Christ as they joined the movement. The crusaders were urged to take
up the cross of Christ, to walk in his steps, to follow his example and to search
a closer relationship with him. The crusaders were guided by crusade preachers
1
Giles Constable and William Purkis have previously studied the crusader’s
stigmata, focusing, however, mainly to the chronicle accounts of the First Crusade. See,
Giles Constable, Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (2008), 64–8; William
Purkis, ‘Stigmata on the First Crusade’, in Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representation of
Divine Power in the Life of the Church, eds Kate Cooper and Jerome Gregory (2005),
99–108; William Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–
c. 1187 (2008), 32–46.
and ideologists to emulate Christ’s divine features as well as his human traits.2
The imitation of Christ’s earthly life would often include the imitation of his
sufferings.3 During the thirteenth century new emphasis was given to the body
of Christ, which had an influence on the imitation of the Passio Christi. The
sufferings of Christ and the marks of these sufferings became a major concern
for thirteenth-century theologians.4
The Sign of the Cross
The first references to the crusader’s stigmata are from the chronicles of the First
Crusade. Several chroniclers mention stigmata that appeared on the flesh of the
first crusaders. Ekkehard von Aura tells that some crusaders had crosses ‘divinely
imprinted’ upon their foreheads or other parts of their bodies, as well as on their
clothes.5 Bernold von Konstanz linked the crusaders’ stigmata closely to the
mark of the cross and to the preaching of Pope Urban II. According to Bernold,
Urban wanted all the participants who had promised to go to the Holy Land to
2
The biblical quotation from Matthew, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me’, [Matthew 16. 24] was repeated in many
crusade sermons. According to the crusade preachers of thirteenth century the imitation
of Christ meant that those who had decided to become crusaders would need to lay aside
their ordinary lives, abandon loved ones, leave behind all their possessions, homes, and
fatherlands and follow Christ. Jacques de Vitry, Sermo I, ed. Christoph T. Maier, in Crusade
Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross (2000), 98; Eudes
de Châteauroux, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 132; Guibert de
Tournai, Sermo III, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 202. Federico Visconti,
Quando idem dominus predicavit crucem litteraliter clero pisano de mandato domini Pape, ed.
Nicole Bériou – I. le Masne de Chermont, in Les sermons et la visite pastorale de Federico
Visconti archévêque de Pise (1253–1277) (2001), 544; Roger of Salisbury, Ascendente Ihesu
in naviculum, ed. P. Cole, in The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270
(1991), 230; Philippe le Chancelier, Bibliothèque municipale d’Avranches, Avranches MS
132, fol. 273rb.
3
The imitation of Christ and the imitation of his sufferings are concepts which can
be traced to early Christian times. Ernest Tinsley, The Imitation of God in Christ: An Essay
on the Biblical Basis of Christian Spirituality (1960), 116; Giles Constable, Three Studies in
Medieval Religious and Social Thought. The Interpretation of Mary and Martha; The Ideal of
the Imitation of Christ; The Orders of Society (1995), 146 n. 7.
4
Constable, Three Studies, 194–5, 200–205.
5
Ekkehard von Aura, Hierosolymita, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens
Occidentaux (1844–95), vol. 5, x, 19: Nonnulli etiam crucis signaculum sibimet in frontibus
vel vestibus seu in quolibet corporis loco divinitus impressum ostendebant, ipsoque se stigmate ad
eamdem Domini militiam praescriptos credebant. Constable, Crusaders and Crusading in the
Twelfth Century, 67.
The Crusader’s Stigmata 105
mark themselves with the cross on their clothes, but for some there appeared the
sign of the cross in their flesh.6
The original meaning of the term stigma was a tattoo, a mark or a brand, such
as those imposed on slaves. This is also part of the meaning given to the stigmata
in the crusading context, particularly in the early phases of the movement. The
first crusaders were marked with a brand, that is, with the sign of the cross. The
crusader’s stigmata thus differed from the later, ‘conventional’ stigmata, from the
five wounds of Christ – the marks of the nails on the hands and the feet and the
mark of the lance on the side – to which the term is usually associated today.7
The crusader’s stigmata are commonly reported to have been imprinted on
the crusader’s shoulder.8 The stigmata could be those that miraculously appeared
on the crusaders’ bodies, or those which were deliberately carved or tattooed on
them.9 There were also suspicious crusading stigmata, which did not seem to
be divinely imprinted or openly tattooed marks. Guibert de Nogent reported
a case of a certain abbot who lacked funds to go on the First Crusade and who
decided to perpetrate a fraud: the abbot carved a cross on his forehead and
claimed that an angel had placed it there.10 According to Guibert, the abbot’s
deception was successful and he was able to trick others into giving him funds
to go crusading, although those who inspected the wound carefully noticed that
it was self-inflicted. This deceit, however, did not matter. Guibert had no reason
to condemn the fraudulent crusading stigmatic in his history. The abbot proved
himself useful during the crusade and he only wanted to emulate God, though he
had not behaved wisely.11 The crusader’s stigmata, whether regarded as divinely
placed, openly branded or otherwise self-imposed, were all manifestations of the
6
Bernold von Konstanz, Chronicon, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores,
(1826–), vol. 5, 464: Omnes quoque qui ad hoc iter se devoverunt, signo crucis se ipsos in vestibus
notare fecit, quod etiam signum quibusdam in ipsa carne notatum apparuit. Purkis, Crusading
Spirituality, 35, Constable, Three Studies, 195.
7
Constable, Three Studies, 199–201.
8
Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 35.
9
Constable, Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century, 67.
10
Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades,
vol. 4, iv, cap. xvii, 182–3: quemdam ibi extitisse abbatem, qui, quum hujus viae adhuc
inter nos tractaretur initium, et competens tanto itineri non habere comperisset pretium, illud
crucis signum, quod vestimentis ex aliqua materie factum apponi consueverat, ipse sibi nescio
quo artificio media in fronte praesculpsit, ut non modo pietum, sed militaris stigmatis instar
ferro esset inflictum. Quo facto, ut fraus mendacio firmaretur, ab angelo sibi per visionem illud
celebravit impressum.
11
Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, vol.
4, iv, cap. xvii, 183: Emulationem quippe Dei habuerat; sed non secundum scientiam prorsus id
egerat […]. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, 38.
crusader’s devotion to God, his willingness to imitate Christ and his desire to
inform others of this willingness.
Wearing the Skin of Christ

The crusade preachers of the thirteenth century continued to use the motif of
stigmata, while explaining crusading in their sermons, but also further developed
the theme. The Franciscan preacher Guibert de Tournai expressed his conception
of the imitatio Christi in a vivid manner in one of his crusade sermons:
Hanc crucem Christi in corde habeas et eius stigmata in corpore tuo feras, ut
intus offerens victimam holocausti etiam foris habeas pellem eius. Debet enim
qui se dicit per internam dilectionem in Christo manere per apertam operum et
passionum eius imitationem sicut ille ambulavit et ipse ambulare […].12
Guibert called for an open imitation of Christ and encouraged the crusaders to
bear the stigmata of Christ in their bodies. He pointed out, that if the crusaders
truly loved Christ, they should be ready to follow Christ’s example, relive his
life and repeat his actions. The true values of the crusader, his piety and his
penitence, should be visible in his outward appearance. This was not merely
an internal source of motivation or an inward mindset, but the crusader’s open
imitation should reverberate also to the exterior. The crusaders should try to
imitate Christ’s humanity, poverty, humility, and infirmity.13
Guibert de Tournai’s passage presents one of the most important aspects
of the imitation of Christ in the crusade ideology of the thirteenth century.
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 184–7:
12
‘May you have this cross of Christ in your heart and bear his stigmata on your body, while
offering inside the sacrifice of whole burnt offering, you may have his skin even on the
outside. He that alleges to abide in Christ by internal love ought to himself by open imitation of
his works and sufferings walk as he walked […]’. I John 2.6. Guibert’s reference to the stigmata
may be viewed in relation to the stigmata of the founder of the Franciscan order, Francis of
Assisi, who was famous for his wounds. For the stigmata of Francis, see Gábor Klaniczay’s
chapter in this volume on pp. 121–2.
13
The crusaders were guided by the preachers to follow the example of Christ in their
daily life. They ought to be humble, modest and avoid extravagance. Guibert, for example,
condemned the luxurious lifestyle of Christians in his crusade sermons. Guibert de Tournai,
Sermo III, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 204–5: Christus in sepulcro, tu in
lectis eburneis et superstitiosis; Christus nudus in cruce, tu in mutatoriis que pendent in perticis;
Christus confixus manus, tu in manicis consuticiis et cyrothecis et anulis; Christus confixus pedes,
tu in calceis rostratis, laqueatis, lunulatis, perforatis […].
The reference to the stigmata stemmed from the thought of taking part in
Christ’s sufferings. The Dominican preacher Humbert de Romans agreed with
Guibert’s views and explicitly required the crusaders to sustain pain for Christ’s
sake. Humbert maintained in his crusade preaching manual, the De predicatione
sancte crucis, that the crusaders should ‘try to bear the stigmata of Christ’ in
their bodies. He urged Christians to carry the stigmata, not only in their hearts
or mouths through faith and confession, but in their bodies through their
willingness to suffer for Christ.14 Preachers using Humbert’s handbook should
explain to their audiences of crusaders or prospective crusaders that serving
Christ meant following him in every way. The crusader’s stigmata were to be
borne inside and outside, silently and out loud, and by expressing the desire to
suffer for Christ, both physically and spiritually.
Philippe le Chancelier, the chancellor of the University of Paris, who
preached against the Albigensian heretics in the 1220s, also referred twice to
the stigmata in his crusade sermons.15 In a sermon preached to the university
scholars, Philippe explained the imitatio Christi with the concept of the
stigmata. Philippe’s intention was to encourage his audience to offer help
from afar to the crusaders fighting elsewhere. Philippe guided the scholars to
endure afflictions of two kinds, ‘the troubles of the soul and the tribulations of
the body’. He cited Saint Paul in the sermon, saying ‘I bear the stigmata of our
Lord Jesus Christ constantly in my body’, and explained that those supporting
the crusade movement from the home front should also be ready to suffer for
Christ’s sake. The supporters of the crusade movement should not shrink from
their responsibilities, even though they were not fighting against the Albigensian
enemy in the Languedoc region, but they should sustain pain at home. And,
although the different kinds of sufferings belonged to the imitation of Christ,
they were easy to bear, for Christ’s yoke was sweet and his burden light.16
14
Humbert de Romans, De predicatione sancte crucis, ed. Jensen [http://www.jggj.dk/
saracenos.htm#], cap. iv.
15
For Philippe le Chancelier’s sermons against the Albigensian heretics see, Christoph
T. Maier, ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal
of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997): 628–57; Nicole Bériou, ‘La predication de croisade de
Philippe le Chancelier et d’Eudes de Châteauroux en 1226’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, vol. 32,
La predication en Pays d’Oc (XIIe–début XVe siècle) (1997): 85–109. I am very grateful to
Christoph Maier for allowing me to make use of his and Nicole Bériou’s transcriptions of the
crusade sermons of Philippe le Chancelier. Maier and Bériou are preparing a further study of
these sermons to be published in the future. I have also consulted the manuscripts of these
sermons in the Bibliothèque municipale d’Avranches, Avranches MS 132, fols 243r–44v,
248v–50r, 250r–51r, 251r–52v, 272r–73v.
16
Avranches MS 132, fol. 252v. Gal. 6:17. Philippe le Chancelier also referred to the
stigmata of Christ in a crusade sermon, which was preached originally to King Louis VIII
and his army at Bourges in 1226, quoting again St Paul’s famous passage. The sermon has
The tribulations of the crusaders differed from that of the supporters of the
crusade movement, as the suffering of the ecclesiastics and the scholars of the
University of Paris, who were the audience of Philippe’s crusade sermon, was
more spiritual in nature. It involved asceticism, abandonment of worldly desires,
and the practice of various religious exercises, such as praying and fasting, while
the crusaders’ suffering was more to do with the hardships of the journey and
the violence of warfare. The ecclesiastics’ tribulations were an old-fashioned way

of bearing the stigmata of Christ, and more along the lines of Saint Paul’s views
and the biblical quotation used in the crusade sermons. The crusaders’ way of
bearing the stigmata of Christ by taking part in wars on behalf of God gave a
new perspective to this theme.
The crusade preachers of the thirteenth century presented crusading in
terms of taking part in the Passio Christi. The preachers used the images of the
stigmata to underline the willingness of the crusaders and the supporters of the
movement to imitate the sacrifice of Christ and to suffer his pains. By suffering,
the crusaders were participating in the mystery of Christ. They were wearing his
skin, exploring his wounds and understanding him better. The patient enduring
of tribulations in imitation of Christ was a demand, which ought not to be
ignored by anyone nor tried to be bypassed, while participating in the crusade
movement. The service of God required from the Christians perseverance, but it
was sweet and rewarding.17
Infirmity as a Source of Power
The image of suffering Christ was also used in the papal crusade propaganda
of the thirteenth century. Pope Gregory IX, for example, emphasized the
torments of Christ in the famous crusade bull, Rachel suum videns, from the
year 1234. Gregory explained that Christians should be ready to fight and suffer
for Christ’s sake, for Christ had suffered insults and injuries for their sake. Christ
had been ‘spattered with spittle, beaten with blows, afflicted by scourging, and
crowned with thorns’. He was ‘crucified’, he ‘drunk gall’ and was ‘pierced by
a lance’.18 Christ had made himself weak so that sinners could be saved. God
been edited considerably. Today, it appears mainly as a model sermon for the feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross or the Invention of the Cross. Avranches MS 132, fols 272r–73v.
17
Avranches MS 132, fol. 252v; Guibert de Tournai, Sermo III, ed. Maier, in Crusade
Propaganda and Ideology, 206: […] quia mittitur a Deo ros dulcedinis et gratia consolationis
celestis in cor crucesignati, quod non est per impatientiam fractum sed celitus confortatum.
18
Epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis pontificum Romanorum, ed. C. Rodenberg, vol. 1, no.
605, 492: […] qui confusione contempta, sputo conspersus, colaphis cesus, flagellis afflictus, spinis
coronatus, coram Pilato sisti tanquam multorum crimimum reus pertulit, ad ultimum crucifixus
et felle potatus, lancea perforatus, emittens cum clamore valido spiritum pro conditionis humane
had miraculously become a man, and was willing to step down from heaven, to
‘descend to the depths of our mortality’.
Gregory IX encouraged Christians to take the cross and aid the Holy Land
by associating Christ’s sufferings to the hardships which the crusaders would
encounter on their journey. Crusading was explained with the concept of
voluntary infirmity or ostensible weakness. Christ had become humanly weak,
so that by dying he could save the mankind. In a similar way, God pretended
to be vulnerable and weak. He permitted the Saracens to occupy the Holy
Land, so that Christians could earn salvation by fighting for God and by
liberating Jerusalem.19
The crusade preachers also discussed the infirmity of Christ in their sermons.
Jacques de Vitry described the fragile purity of Christ in his crusade sermon
and maintained that in the Crucifix anyone could recognize his own likeness
to Christ and his ‘own infirmity in medical terms’.20 Philippe le Chancelier
explained that the infirmity of Christ was a quality, which Christians should
strive after. According to Philippe, Christ decided to become poor and weak,
not powerful, rich or noble. Christ gave poverty and infirmity as signs for
the Christians from which he recognized his own. Those who participated in
the crusades or supported the movement from the home front should follow
Christ’s example and emulate also his weakness.
The crusaders imitated the infirmity of Christ as they took the cross and
exposed themselves to many different dangers. The crusaders would leave
behind the security of their homes and would willingly give up the shelter, the
comforts and the luxuries of their ordinary lives. The crusade preachers advised
the participants of the difficulties and the risks involved in crusading: the perils
on land and sea, the perils of thieves and predators and of course the perils
encountered on the battlefield.21 Those participating on the crusading journey
should embrace all these hardships, become weak and vulnerable, so that they
could win God’s enemies.
Crusades were not common wars, but a very particular kind of warfare
fought on behalf of God. While ordinarily the warriors could place their trust
viribus reparandis, cursum presentis vite saturatus iniuriis consummavit. Epistolae saeculi XIII
e regestis pontificum Romanorum, ed. C. Rodenberg, vol. 1, no. 605, 492: Hic est autem, ut
altius repetamus, qui de paterne solio glorie celis mirabiliter inclinatis ad nostre mortalitatis ima
descendens, non dedignatus est Deus homo […].
19
Epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis pontificum Romanorum, ed. C. Rodenberg, vol. 1, no.
605, 492–3.
20
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 84: Et
sicut vitrum ligno adaptatur, ut melius ymago inspicientis resultet, ita in crucis speculo adaptata
Christi carne quilibet imaginem suam potest cognoscere, ut ex medicine qualitate infirmitatem
suam agnoscat. Philippe le Chancelier, Avranches MS 132, fol. 244r.
21
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 112.
solely in their strength and skill, they could rely on their numbers, to the size
of the army, and draw inspiration and will to win from these physical aspects
of warfare, this was not the case with the crusades. According to the crusade
ideologists and propagandists these material considerations did not matter as
much as the spiritual ones. The focus on the strength of the army could even
be considered harmful in the crusading context. If the warriors trusted in their
numbers, instead of trusting in God, the crusade armies could be defeated.22

According to the crusade ideologists the true strength of the crusade armies
resulted from the spiritual disposition of the participants of the expeditions.
The preachers encouraged the crusaders to place their hope only in God.23 The
crusaders should acknowledge that crusading was dangerous, very possibly life-
threatening, but they should not try to avoid suffering and they should not
fear dying. In fact, the crusaders should not worry about being killed or being
defeated at all, since they would win in any case. The crusaders could defeat their
enemies in battle, but if not, they would still win spiritual benefits.24 Also, if the
crusaders survived the battle, they could return home with their indulgences,
but better yet if they died, then they would ascend to heaven and receive the
eternal joys awaiting them.25
The preachers explained what the infirmity meant in the crusading context
by quoting biblical passages from St Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians: ‘power
is made perfect in infirmity’ and ‘when I am weak, then am I powerful’.26 The
crusaders and the supporters of the movement should suffer and they should
allow themselves to become weak, for in weakness and in suffering they were
more inclined to trust in God. Infirmity created humility. It made the crusaders
and the supporters of the movement more like Christ and it made them
understand that they should not take pride in their own accomplishments, but
their glory was in Christ.
The crusaders, who had decided to fight for Christ’s sake, were voluntarily
weak and vulnerable. They had put themselves in a position, where death was
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo ad peregrinos. Thema sumpta ex Zacharias capitulo ultimo,

22
ed. J. Bird, in ‘James of Vitry’s Sermons to Pilgrims’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008),
81–113, esp. 99.
23
Eudes de Châteauroux, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology,
146; Jacques de Vitry, Sermo ad peregrinos. Thema sumpta ex Zacharias capitulo ultimo, ed.
J. Bird, in ‘James of Vitry’s Sermons’, 99.
24
Eudes de Châteauroux, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology,
150.
25
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo ad peregrinos. Thema sumpta ex Zacharias capitulo ultimo, ed.
J. Bird, in ‘James of Vitry’s Sermons’, 95.
26
Philippe le Chancelier, Avranches MS 132, fol. 249r; Philippe le Chancelier,
Avranches MS 132, fol. 252v; Jacques de Vitry, Ad peregrinos, thema sumpta ex epistola ad
Galathas iii, ed. J. Bird, in ‘James of Vitry’s Sermons’, 92; 2 Cor. 12:9–10.
a strong possibility. Death might even be a desired outcome from the suffering.
The crusaders would find strength in their weakness. The infirmity was a source
of power and a way to victory. God fought alongside with the crusaders, who
were suffering for his sake and trusted only in him, and the crusaders could
be sure to be rewarded, if they would die in battle. The crusaders would not
waste their strength in worrying for their lives, but they were ready and willing
to die. As Guibert de Tournai put it, the crusader would fight manfully for his
wounded king [Christ]. He would ‘fight even to the blood’ and he would ‘have
faith in his king’s wounds’.27
Celebrating the Sacrifice of the Dead
The wounds of Christ found on the bodies of dead crusaders implied that the
crusaders’ trust in God was not misplaced. The chronicles of the First Crusade
mention dead crusaders, who were found marked with the wounds of Christ
on their bodies.28 Humbert de Romans also mentioned these stigmata on the
dead crusaders in his preaching manual. According to Humbert, 800 crusaders
had drowned in a shipwreck during the First Crusade. The bodies of these dead
crusaders were collected and the mark of the cross was discovered on their
bodies. It was God’s will that the same victorious sign that they had worn while
living would be imprinted on them as they died.29 Humbert also mentioned a
story in the manual, where some of the soldiers of Charlemagne were marked by
God with a red sign of the cross on their shoulders. This meant that the soldiers
27
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 182:
Stat rex noster in prelio vulneratus, ut viriliter dimicet Christianus et, si usque ad sanguinem
sustineat, in vulnera sui regis aspicat et confidat.
28
Raymond d’Aguilers informed in his history, that crusaders who had been captives
and died at the hands of the enemy were found to be marked with crosses on their right
shoulders. Raymond d’Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, Recueil des
Historiens des Croisades, vol. 3, xiv, 272: sex vel septem de nostris pauperibus a paganis capti
et interfecti sunt: hi autem omnes defuncti cruces in dextris habuerunt humeris. Both Fulcher
de Chartres and Guibert de Nogent also told how crusaders who had drowned during the
First Crusade had been marked with crosses on their shoulders. Fulcher de Chartres, Historia
Hierosolymitana, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (1913), lib. I, cap. VIII, 169–70: nam cum corpora
iam mortua qui circumstabant pro posse collegissent, repertae sunt in carnibus quorundam
super spatulas scilicet cruces insignitae. nam quod in pannis suis vivi gestaverant, competebat,
Domino volente, in ipsis servitio suo sic praeoccupatis idem signum victoriosum sub pignore
fidei permanere […]. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, in Recueil des Historiens des
Croisades, vol. 4, vii, cap. 32, 250–51. Constable, Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth
Century, 67–8.
29
saracenos.htm#], cap. Xxxix.
would die in the coming battle. Charlemagne wanted to save his men and locked
the soldiers in an oratory. However, after the battle, the soldiers were found
dead, despite the cautionary measures.30
There are striking similarities with these stories of dead crusaders marked
with crosses on their shoulders and dead Christian warriors marked with red
crosses on their shoulders. Humbert de Romans included both of these accounts
into his crusade preaching manual. The references to marks on the bodies of the
dead indicate a desire to celebrate the sacrifice made by those who had died.
The crusaders, who had drowned, had not been able to win their enemies, or
indeed reach their intended destination during the First Crusade, but they had
won a special favour from God. God had recognized the dead crusaders and
marked them with his sign. This sign was imprinted on their skin and implied
that the crusaders had earned a place in heaven, just as the warriors fighting in
Spain against the infidels had not participated in the battle, but had nonetheless
won martyrdom.
The stories of the dead stigmatic crusaders and the dead soldiers of
Charlemagne could be used by the crusade preachers, relying on Humbert’s
manual, to convince their audiences of the legitimacy of crusading. The war
against the infidels was just and the crusaders were fulfilling God’s will. With
these stories of dead Christian soldiers, the crusade preachers could also try to
alleviate the anxieties of those who were considering becoming crusaders, or
who were about to embark on a journey. Even though the dangers encountered
on the crusade might prove to be lethal, God would value the sacrifice of those
who would die, no matter how they died, and the dead would be celebrated and
they would receive their due reward. Those who died in the service of Christ
would be remembered and their sacrifice would be cherished in heaven.
The Value of Suffering
The theme of suffering appears to have been a significant subject matter to

crusade ideologists and propagandists of the thirteenth century. This was
important from a motivational standpoint: the sufferings of Christ were utilized
to convince people to take the cross; if Christ had suffered for them, they should
suffer for him and for all the Christendom. This was also important from a
didactic standpoint: the theme was used to explain the experience of crusading;
Humbert utilized the Gesta Karoli Magni in Hispania of Pseudo-Turpin in his
30
preaching manual. Humbert de Romans, De predicatione sancte crucis, ed. Jensen [http://
www.jggj.dk/saracenos.htm#], cap. xxxvi; for the Pseudo-Turpin, see David A. Trotter,
Medieval French literature and the crusades (1100–1300) (1988), 23–4; For the chronicle,
see Die Chronik von Karl dem Grossen und Roland: Der lateinische Pseudo-Turpin in den
Handschriften aus Aachen und Andernach, ed. H.-W. Klein (1986).
the journey was full of difficulties, for which the crusaders should prepare
themselves. In the crusade sermons, the crusaders’ tribulations are downplayed
in comparison to the sufferings of Christ,31 or considered slight in comparison
to the glory gained by crusading.32 But most importantly, the sufferings are
regarded as a way for the crusaders to achieve a likeness to Christ.
The crusaders could express their compassion, they could suffer with Christ.
The sufferings gave the crusaders a behavioural norm to follow. When imitating
Christ, the crusaders should go through tribulations. This meant that the ‘true’
crusaders, those who really wanted to emulate him and follow his example, would
not just endure the pain of travel and war, but search for suffering, become weak
and unprotected, and be ready to sacrifice themselves. Suffering was required for
there was special value in the crusader’s pain. Many Christians would say that
they followed Christ, but the crusaders suffering for him truly followed him.
This way God would find out who was willing to follow him in truth, and who
was following him only in word and not in deed.33
The value of suffering is explained in the crusade sermons in various ways.
First of all, there was the conventional Christian view that there were merits to
be gained in the chastisement of the flesh. Bodily sufferings guided Christians to
a better life, away from sin, and reduced the possible pains awaiting them in the
afterlife. The sufferings could be regarded as a gift from God, which benefitted
the immortal soul.34 For this reason, Roger of Salisbury, the bishop of Bath and
Wells, urged the crusaders and penitents to suffer in his crusade sermon: Christ
had suffered on the cross leaving an example for Christians, which they ought to
follow; they should chastise their bodies and bring them into subjection.35
By taking part in the sufferings of Christ and reliving them by crusading,
the crusaders could establish a closer relationship with Christ. Through the
afflictions the participants could ‘catch’ Christ. The crusaders could find
31
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo III, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology,
204–7.
32
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 114;
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 188; Philippe
le Chancelier, Avranches MS 132, fol. 251v.
33
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 96. Eudes
de Châteauroux, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 138. Guibert de
Tournai, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 184–6.
34
For these views see, for example, Jacques de Vitry’s sermons for the lepers and the
infirm. Nicole Bériou and François-Olivier Touati, Voluntate Dei leprosus: les lépreux entre
conversion et exclusion aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (1991), esp. 101–4. See also, Scott Pincikowski,
Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue (2002), 15–16. See also Gábor
Klaniczay’s chapter in this volume.
35
Roger of Salisbury, Ascendente Ihesu in naviculum, ed. Cole, The Preaching of the
Crusades, 230. Roger cites Peter in the passage. I Peter 2.21.
Christ by suffering for him, and ‘hold’ Christ, that is, keep him in their hearts,
by following his ways faithfully. But the crusaders could only achieve this by
exposing themselves to ‘every danger and labour’. They should not expect to
find Christ without an effort, without hurting themselves.36 The Cardinal of
Tusculum and the legate of the Seventh Crusade, Eudes de Châteauroux used an
allusion of a dog trying to catch prey in his crusade sermon. According to Eudes,
the dog did not hesitate to go through a thorn bush to get its prey, but it hurt
itself and was covered in its own blood. The crusader’s prey was Christ.37
Humbert de Romans referred to the crusader’s reward from his sufferings
in the De predicatione sancte crucis. Humbert pointed out that the crusader
might recall all his pains and tribulations to his benefit at the final judgement.
According to Humbert, the crusader could appeal to Christ by noting that while
Christ had been on the cross for him one day, he had been on the journey for
Christ’s sake for many days, suffered torments, travelled on a crowded ship,
drunk putrid water bubbling with worms and fought many times against his
enemies.38 These sufferings of the crusader had earned him penance, attained him
indulgence and led him to salvation. The reward in heaven would compensate
for all the sufferings of the crusader on earth – those who laboured for Christ’s
sake on crusades could rest in heaven.39
The theme of suffering was linked in the crusade ideology to the theme of
purification. The crusaders had before them a twofold task of cleansing: they
needed to get rid of the infidel filth in the Holy Land and they needed to purify
themselves, to get rid of the filth of sin from themselves. To achieve both of these
goals, the crusaders needed to suffer, as Christ had suffered on the cross. Guibert
de Tournai maintained that when Christ died on the cross, he ‘through the five
channels of his body opened up five rivers of blood’, and the flood of this blood
was enough to cleanse the whole world. However, the sinners and rebels, who did
Eudes de Châteauroux, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 138.
36
Eudes de Châteauroux, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology,

37
138: Qui vult Christum capere et habere oportet ut eum sequatur. Iste secutus est eum usque ad
mortem. Scitis quod canis numquam predam comprehenderet fugientem per sentes, si aculeos
spinarum timeret, sed spinis se ingerit, laceratur, proprio sanguine cruentatur. Sic qui Dominum
vult comprehendere omni periculo et labori se exponat. Quare? Quia tali via incedit preda sua,
id est Dominus.
38
saracenos.htm#], cap. xix. Invitatio, 22.
39
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 116;
Jacques de Vitry, Ad peregrinos, thema sumpta ex epistola ad Galathas iii, ed. J. Bird, in ‘James
of Vitry’s Sermons to Pilgrims’, Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008): 81–113, esp. 93.
Guibert de Tournai also underlined that the crusader’s cross was a key to paradise. Guibert de
Tournai, Sermo III, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 208. Guibert de Tournai,
Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 200.
not take the cross and were not ready to follow Christ, but persisted in their sins,
were not cleansed. For Guibert, the crusaders’ were the electi, true Christians,
who would be rewarded for their suffering. The rebels, on the other hand, were
‘anti’-crusaders, who ignored God’s call, did not take the cross, prevented others
from crusading and refused to become infirm and suffer for Christ or with him.40
Guibert linked the imitation of Christ to apocalyptic images of the blood of
the lamb in his sermon. According to him, ‘the elect crusaders’ were willing to
emulate Christ’s sacrifice: the crusaders were dressed in white robes, because they
had suffered ‘tribulations and soaked their robes and cleansed them in the blood
of the lamb’.41 The willingness to suffer for Christ purified the crusaders and
placed them on a higher pedestal than the rest of the Christians in the crusade
ideology. The torments would bring the crusaders closer to Christ: through their
pains they could contemplate what Christ had gone through and understand
him better. By suffering, the crusaders could gain the special love of Christ.
In the crusade sermons the ultimate imitation of Christ’s sufferings was the
crusading martyrdom. The possibility of martyrdom was hinted at in several
of the sermons, with encouragements for the crusaders to sacrifice themselves,
to imitate the Passion of Christ to the very end.42 The participants of crusades
could imitate Christ’s death on the cross by dying themselves in a war fought on
his behalf. The ‘true’ crusaders should have the inclination to die, if need be.43
They should not try to get themselves killed, but if the situation called for it,
they could offer their lives for Christ’s sake, they could become Christ’s closest
friends, and earn a martyr’s reputation. The ‘truest’ of the crusaders embraced
40
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 194;
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo III, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 200. See also,
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 122; Cole, The
Preaching of the Crusades, 199; Miikka Tamminen, ‘The Test of Friendship: Amicitia in the
Crusade Ideology of the Thirteenth Century’, in De Amicitia. Friendship and Social Networks
in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Krötzl (2010),
213–29, esp. 224.
41
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo II, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology, 200:
de electis crucesignatis quod ipsi sunt in conspectu agni, amicti stolis albis et palme in manibus
eorum. Amicti stolis albis, quia venerunt de tribulatione et laverunt stolas suas et dealbaverunt
eas in sanguine agni.
42
Guibert de Tournai, Sermo I, ed. Maier, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology,
182. Eudes de Châteauroux, Sermo in anniversario Roberti comitis Attrabatensis et aliorum
nobilium qui interfecti fuerant a Sarracenis apud Mansuram in Egipto, ed. Cole, in The
Preaching of the Crusades, 238–9; Eudes de Châteauroux, ‘De sancto Georgio sermo’, ed.
Charansonnet, in L’université, 738.
43
Jacques de Vitry, Sermo ad fratres ordinis militaris insignitos character militiae Christi,
Troyes MS 228, fol. 132v.
their own infirmity and sacrificed themselves, demonstrating their absolute love
of God and Christ.
Conclusions
The motif of stigmata was utilized in various ways in the crusading context. The
early references to the stigmata pointed to the extraordinary nature of crusading,
to the devotion of the first crusaders and to their willingness to follow Christ
and defend the Holy Land. The crusader’s stigmata separated the crusaders
from those who were unwilling to take the cross. During the thirteenth century
crusade preachers utilized and developed the theme of stigmata in their sermons.
The preachers called for an open imitation of Christ. The notion of emulating
the bodily sufferings of Christ was put forward. The crusaders were told to bear
the stigmata of Christ on their bodies, which would be a visible, outer expression
of the inner devotion to Christ. The open imitation meant that the crusaders
should follow Christ’s example of humility, modesty and simplicity, while they
were serving Christ. The crusaders deeds and appearance should correspond to
their thoughts and beliefs.
The crusaders were also encouraged to imitate the infirmity of Christ. This
infirmity did not mean weakness in battle, but rather acceptance that crusading
could bring bodily harm and determination to suffer for Christ’s sake. Just as
Christ had become voluntarily weak and mortal, when he became a man and later
died for the sake of mankind, so too the crusaders made themselves voluntarily
weak, allowing themselves to become vulnerable, exposing themselves to life-
threatening dangers and accepting that they must suffer and possibly die for
others’ sake. The stigmata were also used in a celebratory sense, emphasizing the
piety of the stigmatized, or marking the sacrifice of those crusaders who had died
on their journey.
The crusader’s special friendship with Christ was explained in the crusade
sermons of the thirteenth century with the theme of Passio Christi, with the
topic of salvation and redemption. Christ’s act of redemption on the cross was
a frequently used image in the crusade sermons. With this theme the preachers
explained the relations between Christ and the crusader. The crusader’s cross
was compared to Christ’s cross. The crusaders were marked with this cross and
they would be the recipients of Christ’s special love as expressed on the cross.
The crusaders would earn redemption and salvation by wearing Christ’s cross
of Passion, by serving him and by going on the crusades. The theme included
notions of reciprocity: Christ’s act of redemption gave salvation for Christians.
The crusaders would try to recompense this by imitating the Passion of Christ,
by suffering and fighting for him. In return for participating in this exchange of
gifts, the reciprocal sufferings of the crucesignati and Christ, the crusaders would
gain the crusade indulgence. The crusaders who suffered for Christ were the
particular objects of Christ’s act of redemption and his love.
The imitation of the sufferings of Christ was presented as particularly
important for ‘true’ crusaders in the crusade sermons of thirteenth century. The
ideal crusaders would go through tribulations and seek further suffering, thus
acquiring further merit, which would enable them to build a closer relationship
with Christ. The crusaders, who suffered the most for Christ’s sake, showed their
great love and compassion for him. The true crusaders would be able to find and
hold Christ, ‘wear his skin on the outside’ or ‘bear his stigmata’ on their own
bodies, taking part in the mystery of the Passion of Christ. The truest of the
crusaders were also prepared to imitate Christ’s sacrifice and die for him. This
ultimate emulation was a sign of true commitment and devotion, which would
make the ideal crusaders Christ’s very special friends.

Chapter 7
Illness, Self-inflicted Body Pain and
Supernatural Stigmata: Three Ways of
Identification with the Suffering
Body of Christ*
Gábor Klaniczay
Stigmata, that is the replication of the sacred wounds of Jesus Christ in the
body of his devout believer, is a most specific religious manifestation, first
emerging in medieval Latin Christendom. These wounds represent an infirmitas
noteworthy from many different angles. In the first place they are an emulation
of the infirmity suffered by Jesus Christ for the redemption of humankind:
an imitatio Christi, which goes to the utmost extreme from the bodily point
of view for reproducing, with the constraining logic of the self-sacrifice, the
beneficial, redemptory effect of Christ’s crucifixion. The stigmatization of Saint
Francis of Assisi in 1224, this ‘grand and singular miracle’ (as described by Pope
Alexander IV in 12541) was meant to propagate the message that in those times
an alter Christus had been active. Any research on stigmata should start with
the understanding of ‘the five wounds of Saint Francis’ – how they could come
about and what their effect was on posterity.
As for the broad framework of the medieval evolution leading to the
emergence of a more and more emphatic imitation of Christ in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, which was the foundation of the spirituality of Saint Francis,
it cannot be my task to describe it here, let me only refer to the ground-breaking
studies by Giles Constable2 and Caroline Walker Bynum3 here. Neither can I
* I owe thanks to my colleague Judith Rasson for reviewing my English text.

1
Saturnino Mencherini, ed., Codice diplomatico della Verna e delle SS. Stimate di
S. Francesco d’Assisi nel VII° centenario del gran prodigio (1924), 20–21.
2
Giles Constable, ‘The Imitation of the Body of Christ’, in Three Studies in Medieval
Life and Thought (1995), 143–247.
3
Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food
to Medieval Women (1991); idem., ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later
Middle Ages’, in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, eds Michael Feher, Ramona
Nadaff and N. Tazi (1991), 161–220.
go into the recently uncovered illuminating series of even earlier precedents

which trace the devotion to Christ’s wounds and their symbolic, theological
use back to Saint Paul’s epistle to the Galatians (Gal. 6, 17): ‘I bear the marks
of Jesus branded on my body’ (ego enim stigmata Iesu in corpore meo porto).4
I cannot give a comprehensive discussion of the voluminous recent debates on the
stigmata of Saint Francis either (from André Vauchez,5 Chiara Frugoni,6 Arnold
Davidson,7 Octavian Schmucki,8 to Giovanni Miccoli,9 Rosalind Brooke,10

Jacques Dalarun,11 Solanus Benfatti,12 and Ulrich Köpf13), with their powerful
insights into the representations of and the controversies around this theme. For
gaining some insight into the religious uses of infirmity, I will single out two
essential aspects: how illness and ascetic self-mutilation related to stigmatization.
I propose to explore the interplay of these ‘three ways of identification with the
suffering body of Christ’, as I put it in the title of my study.
In the footsteps of Christ and also those of Saint Francis, according
to the documentation assembled by a nineteenth-century French doctor,
Antoine Imbert-Gourbeyre,14 completed recently by a French theologian,
Joaquin Bouflet,15 up to the present there are about 350 more or less well-
4
Carolyn Muessig, ‘Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality before
Francis of Assisi’, Church History 82 (2013): 40–68.
5
André Vauchez, ‘Les stigmates de Saint François et leurs détracteurs dans les derniers
siècles du moyen âge’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 80 (1968): 595–625; idem.,
Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint (2012).
6
Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate. Una storia per parole e
immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (1993).
7
Arnold Davidson, ‘Miracles of Bodily Transformation, or, How St. Francis Received
the Stigmata’, in Picturing Science, Producing Art, eds Caroline A. Jones, Peter Gallison and
Amy Slaton (1998), 101–24.
8
Octavian Schmucki, The Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi: A Critical Investigation in
the Light of Thirteenth-Century Sources (1991).
9
Giovanni Miccoli, ‘Considerazioni sulle stimmate’, in Atti della tavola rotonda (1997).
10
Rosalind Brooke, The Image of St. Francis. Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth
Century (2006).
11
Jacques Dalarun, The Misadventure of Francis of Assisi (2006); idem., ‘The Great
Secret of Francis’, in The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies New Perspectives, eds
Jacques Dalarun, Michael Cusato and Carla Salvati (2002), 9–26; idem., ‘À cette époque,
le bienheureux François avait des cicatrices aux mains et aux pieds et au côté’, in Discorsi
sulle stimmate dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea – Discours sur les stigmates du Moyen Âge à
l’époque contemporaine, ed. Gábor Klaniczay (2013).
12
Solanus M. Benfatti C.F.M, The Five Wounds of Saint Francis (2011).
13
Ulrich Köpf, ‘Die Stigmata des Franziskus von Assisi’, in Zwischen Himmel und Erde.
Körperliche Zeichen der Heiligkeit, ed. Waltraud Pulz (2012), 35–60.
14
Docteur Imbert-Gourbeyre, La Stigmatisation (1996).
15
Joachim Bouflet, Les stigmatisés (1996).
Illness, Self-inflicted Body Pain and Supernatural Stigmata 121
documented cases of stigmatization, several of these stigmatics currently living.

Before examining the two medieval centuries of this phenomenon, it will be
illuminating, in a first overview, to recall some recent examples documented in
far greater detail than the medieval cases, especially as regards the medical aspect
of this miraculous infirmity – so I will start my discussion with four conspicuous
modern and contemporary stigmatics.
***
The first famous case of stigmatization in reaction to the Enlightenment, the

French Revolution and the Napoleonic secularization of Europe was that of
the former Augustinian nun, Anne-Catherine Emmerick (1774–1824), a
visionary woman of Westphalia, also immortalized by the great romantic poet,
Clemens Brentano, who became her most devout follower and scribe.16 Her
visions started while she was still in the cloister: they were accompanied with
an unbearable headache which culminated in the appearance of the bleeding
wounds of the Crown of Thorns. In addition, in 1812 other bleeding signs (two
crosses on her chest, bleeding weekly, and the five wounds of Christ) completed
her stigmatization. From that time on for the remaining 12 years of her life she
was under the medical supervision of a devout doctor, Franz-Wilhelm Wesener,
who wrote a detailed clinical diary of what he observed.17 Anne-Catherine
Emmerick spent these 12 years ailing, suffering in her bed, abandoning almost
all food, stormed by both enthusiasts and critical observers who accused her of
regular self-mutilation and being ‘mesmerized’18 by her doctor.
Besides several other notorious nineteenth-century stigmatics whose related
illnesses could not be discussed here,19 the most remarkable medical history was
that of the stigmatized Belgian village seamstress, a Franciscan tertiary, Louise
16
Otto Weiß, ‘Seherinnen und Stigmatisierte’, in Wunderbare Erscheinungen. Frauen
und katholische Frömmigkeit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen
(1995), 54–70; Joaquin Bouflet, Anne-Catherine Emmerick. Celle qui partagea la Passion de
Jésus (2004); Clemens Brentano, Anna Katharina Emmerick – Biographie (1981); Georg
Brandstetter, ‘“Reliquienberg” und Stigmata. Clemens Brentano und Anna Katharina
Emmerick – der Blut-Kreislauf der Schrift’, in Stigmata. Poetiken der Körperinschrift, eds
Bettine Menke and Barbara Vinken (2004), 243–68.
17
Franz-Wilhelm Wesener, Tagebuch über Anna Katharina Emmerick (1926).
18
Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (1968).
19
Maria von Mörl (1812–68), cf. Nicole Priesching, Maria von Mörl (1812–1868).
Leben und Bedeutung einer ‘stigmatisierten Jungfrau’ aus Tirol im Kontext Ultramontaner
Frömmigkeit (2004); Maria Domenica Lazzeri (1815–48), cf. Lord Shrewsbury, Les vierges
stigmatisées du Tyrol, 2007; Claudio Leonardi, ‘La vita di Domenica Lazzeri da Capriana’, in
La santità del Tirolo. Domenica Lazzeri da Capriano, ed. Ludmila Vesely Leonardi (1991),
15–37.
Lateau (1850–83).20 She grew up as an orphan (her father died of smallpox

when she was two months old), at the age of two she got nearly drowned and
she survived smallpox herself. At the age of 14, she was trampled upon by the
cow she was herding, which accident left her a hunchback for life. Around the
age of 18 she had a number of new health problems, pains in the throat, in the
head, in the lungs and vomiting blood. It was this late that her periods started.
And this was also when the bleeding stigmata appeared on her body. These
stigmata and the accompanying trance states, ecstasies, were the object of the
most scrupulous medical observation for several years. They became the starting
point of an international debate on the medical explanation of stigmata, even
stirring up the mood in the Royal Academy of Belgium, and reaching as far as
Berlin and Paris. In the subsequent 15 years of her life she was constantly under
medical observation.21 She became more and more ill, after some time she was
unable to leave her bed and she almost completely abstained from food. She died
at the – significant – age of 33.
The best-known contemporary stigmatic was again from Italy, a Capuchin
friar, Padre Pio da Pietralcina (Francesco Forgione) (1887–1968), canonized
in 2002. As we learn from the testimonies of his life, he had been afflicted
since childhood with a number of illnesses. At six he suffered from a grave
gastroenteritis, which kept him bedridden for a long time. At 10 he caught
typhoid fever. At 17 he suddenly fell ill, complaining of loss of appetite,
insomnia, exhaustion, fainting spells and terrible migraines. He vomited
frequently and could only drink milk. Throughout his life he suffered from
‘asthmatic bronchitis’; he had a large kidney stone, with frequent abdominal
pains; he also suffered from inflammations of the eye, of the nose, of the ear
and of the throat. In WWI he was drafted into the army; after 30 days he
was sent on leave due to bad health. Later he was diagnosed with pulmonary
tuberculosis, was then sent home on permanent leave and assigned to service to
the mountain convent of San Giovanni Rotondo. It was after this, in 1918, that
the stigmata appeared on his body after a prayer in ecstasy at the convent church.
The news of this miracle unleashed a passionate new controversy that involved
several medical examinations and an inquisitorial procedure which ended with
a cautious judgement to separating the stigmatic from his devout pilgrims and
prescribed for him complete isolation during several years. Besides his stigmata,
which remained visible on his body until shortly before his death, that is, for
Sofie Lachapelle, ‘Between Miracle and Sickness: Louise Lateau and the Experience
20
of Stigmata and Ecstasy’ (2004); Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Louise Lateau et les stigmatisées du
XIXème siècle entre directeurs spirituels, dévots, psychologues et médecins’, in Discorsi sulle
stimmate dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea (2013), 279–320.
21
Ferdinand Lefebvre, Louise Lateau, sa vie, ses stigmates, ses extases (1870); Docteur
Imbert-Gourbeyre, Les stigmatisées. Louise Lateau de Bois-d’Haine et Palma d’Oria (1873);
Dr Bourneville, Science & Miracle. Louise Lateau, ou la stigmatisée belge (1875).
about 40 years, a number of subsequent illnesses aggravated his state of health.

The way he bore his physical suffering contributed much to his reputation of
sanctity already in life.22
The fourth contemporary stigmatic I mention here is a German, Therese
Neumann (1898–1962). This peasant girl from the Bavarian Konnersreuth had
a series of tormenting accidents from the age of 20 on: she hurt her spine, her
skull, she began to gradually lose her sight, leading to almost total blindness
and developed a series of excruciating pains. With a gradual paralysis of her
legs and a series of wounds appearing on her legs and back and recurrent
temporary deafness and muteness, she became a special case for a number of
doctors treating her, especially after several of these illnesses were inexplicably
and lastingly cured – healings which she and her spiritual father, the Reverend
Joseph Naber, attributed to supernatural intervention. Her stigmata appeared
gradually, starting on Holy Friday of 1926 on the backs of her hands and legs; in
1927 on the insides of the hands and legs, also the eight wounds of the Crown
of Thorns; in 1928 the marks on her shoulder from carrying the Cross, and
in 1929 wounds of the flagellation. After 1926, for 36 years in sequence she
took no food except for the Holy Host; she was strictly supervised by doctors
who testified to this miraculous total abstinence. She had ecstasies regularly on
Fridays, especially on Holy Fridays, when she participated in Christ’s suffering
and lost a considerable quantity of blood through these wounds; tears of blood
frequently accompanied her visions. Her health remained poor until the end of
her life, but her state was rather stable for a remarkably long period.23
***
These four modern and contemporary examples draw attention to the significant
role of different illnesses in the lives of stigmatics. They have allowed (along with
a number of other cases) interesting medical debates on the relationship of the
non-healing, recurrent haemorrhages to these illnesses, including the problem
of the origin of the stigmata possibly being psychosomatic. In the light of all this
I propose now to re-examine the evidence of these illnesses and the religious
understanding of the suffering caused by such bodily ailments in the life of Saint
Francis and some other stigmatics in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries.
22
Sergio Luzzato, Padre Pio. Miracoli e politica nell’Italia del Novecento (2007); Francesco
Castelli, Padre Pio e il Sant’Uffizio (1918–1939). Fatti, protagonisti, documenti inediti
(2011); idem., ‘Stimmate “sotto la lente” del Sant’Uffizio: i casi di padre Pio da Pietrelcina e
di Therese Neumann’, in Discorsi sulle stimmate dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea (2013),
333–63.
23
Joaquin Bouflet, Thérèse Neumann ou le paradoxe de la sainteté (1999); Francesco
Castelli, ‘La Congregazione del Sant’Uffizio e il caso di Therese Neumann durante il
pontificato di Pio XI’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 23 (2010): 101–34.
I will try to gain an insight, how bodily pain and illness could have become a tool
for the imitation of Christ in the Middle Ages. After reviewing this twist of
the changing medieval appreciation of pain (analysed so eloquently in a broader
context by Esther Cohen24), in the concluding part of my study I will examine the
other – much better known – medieval way of identification with the sufferings
of Christ, the self-inflicted pain of asceticism, self-flagellation, going sometimes
to extremes of self-mutilation.25 This aspect of medieval spirituality has recently

been connected with the stigmata of Saint Francis in an influential article by
Richard Trexler26 – a context that is also relevant for a number of subsequent
medieval stigmatics.
A great deal is known about the different illnesses of Saint Francis from his
legends and other testimonies, which emphasize his physical suffering at several
points, especially in the last years of his life. The prolific expert on this issue,
Octavian Schmucki, who is also the author of an already mentioned monograph
on Francis’ stigmata, argued for the emerging consensus that Francis had two
principal illnesses: quartan malaria and the eye disease trachoma.
He must have contracted quartan malaria in the rude conditions of
itinerant preaching.27 His state is movingly described in an episode of the Assisi
Compilation, when Francis exercises a shocking public penance for having
received favourable treatment and eaten meat during his illness. Despite his
grave quartan fever he went out accusing himself, barefoot, to the snowy streets
of Assisi, a sight that made the whole population cry in sorrow.28
There have also been speculations about how malaria could have caused
stigma-like wounds on the body of Francis. In 1935, Edward Frederick
Hartung called attention to the fact that a possible complication of quartan
malaria occasionally seen around Francis’ time was known as purpura, a purple
haemorrhage of blood into the skin, which generally occurs symmetrically, so
each hand and foot would have been affected equally. ‘If this were the case of St.
Francis, he would have been afflicted by ecchymoses, an exceedingly large purpura.
The purple spots of blood may have been punctured while in the wilderness and
therefore appear as an open wound like that of Christ’.29
Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture (2010).
24
Niklas Largier, In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (2007).

25
26
Richard Trexler, ‘The Stigmatized Body of Francis of Assisi: Conceived, Processed,
Disappeared’, in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter. Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis,
körperliche Ausdrucksformen, eds Klaus Schreiner and Marc Müntz (2002), 463–77.
27
Oktavian Schmucki, ‘Spiritualität, Askese und Krankheiten nach den Schriften des
Franziskus von Assisi’, in Franziskus von Assisi. Das Bild des Heiligen aus neuer Sicht, eds
Dieter R. Bauer, Helmut Feld and Ulrich Köpf (2005), 71–96.
28
‘The Assisi Compilation’, ch. 80; 181–2.
29
Edward Frederick Hartung, ‘St. Francis and Medieval Medicine’, Annals of Medical
History 7 (1935): 85–91.
A second hypothesis, proposed by Joanne Schatzlein and Daniel P. Sulmasy,

is that given his frequent and shockingly close contact with the leper, Francis may
have contracted leprosy himself. ‘Paleopathological and paleoepidemiological
data suggest that S. Francis suffered from clinically significant leprosy of the
borderline or tuberculoid form’, they assert.30 Although this is not unlikely,
similar rumours also circulated in the age about other saints caring for lepers,
such as St Hedwig of Silesia;31 this hypothesis is still lacks convincing evidence.

Another documented illness of Saint Francis was trachoma (Coniunctivitis
Trachomatosa seu Granulosa), also called the Egyptian eye disease, which he
may have contracted when he joined the fifth crusade. The excruciating pains
this illness caused, and the admirable serenity with which he tolerated this
are lengthily described in the legend of Thomas of Celano: ‘O martyr, martyr,
laughing and rejoicing, who endured so gladly what was bitter and painful for
others to see!’32 It was during this last year of his life, when he was taken care of
by the sisters of San Damiano and treated by special doctors without success,
that he composed the additional verse of the Canticle to the Sun: ‘Praised be
You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love / and bear infirmity
and tribulation. / Blessed are those who endure in peace, / for by You, Most
High, shall they be crowned’.33
These verses refer to the special spiritual significance Francis attributed to the
experience of illness – an issue he also addressed in the Regula non bullata (cap.
10), where he speaks about the caring for sick brothers who should be served as
‘they would want to be served themselves’ (Matthew 7:12). He adds that they
should ‘thank the God for everything […] because God teaches all those He has
destined for eternal life “by the torments of punishments”, sicknesses, “and the
spirit of sorrow”’.34 In his Admonitions he tells in greater detail what he means.
30
Joanne Schatzlein and Daniel P. Sulmasy, ‘The Diagnosis of St. Francis: Evidence for
Leprosy’, Franciscan Studies 47 (1987): 181–217.
31
‘De ducissa leprosa, que sanata est, dum ecclesiam beate Marie edificasset’, in Alfons
Hilka, ed., Die beiden ersten Bücher der Libri VIII miraculorum (1937), III, 84–5; cf. Ewald
Walter, ‘Der historische Wert der ältesten nicht urkundlichen Quelle zum Leben der hl.
Hedwig und zur Gründung der Zisterzienserinnenabtei Trebnitz aus der Feder des Caesarius
von Heisterbach’, in Beiträge zur Schlesischen Kirchengeschichte, ed. Bernhard Stasiewski
(1969), 76–170.
32
Thomas of Celano, ‘The Life of Saint Francis’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Document,
vol. I. The Saint, eds Regis J. Armstrong, J A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short (1999),
ch. 107; 276.
33
Francis of Assisi, ‘The Canticle of the Creatures’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents,
114.
34
Francis of Assisi, ‘The Earlier Rule’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ch. 10;
71–2; Francis quotes here some words from a homily of Gregory the Great on Luke 10,
1–10, and adds the word ‘sicknesses’ himself.
In a sentence which criticizes self-pride because of special knowledge, mastery

of languages, theological acuity, bodily beauty, wealth or even ability to work
miracles, he continues that ‘in which we may glory’ is rather ‘our infirmities, and
in bearing daily the holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor, 12:5; Luke, 14:
27).35 The experience of suffering from illness – an experience Saint Francis really
knew – was not seen by him as divine punishment for personal sins (he refers
nowhere to such supporting Old Testament quotes), but rather as a spiritual

exercise for participating in the suffering of Christ.
With Francis becoming the emblematic saint of late medieval Christianity,
and with the apologies, discussions and controversies around his ‘grand miracle’,
the stigmatization, the official interpretation by the Franciscan Order and also
the papacy evolved in the direction of attributing this event more and more
emphatically to Christ directly impressing his wounds on the body of Francis
as a special, unique, personal grace. This is the tenor of Bonaventure’s Legenda
maior achieved in 1265,36 which replaced the previous descriptions by Thomas
of Celano and other early hagiographers, and this is the interpretation Giotto
and his followers put into images.37 Illness and infirmity as factors or the context
for the emergence of these wounds were only brought up by sacrilegious critics
such as the Silvestrine monk Leonard Mathioli of Foligno, who proposed
mockingly in 1361 that Francis caused these wounds himself when falling out of
an olive tree he had climbed in ecstasy (this critique did not escape the attention
of the inquisition).38
A more generic ‘natural’ explanation emerged as well, however, that the
wounds were caused by the ‘vehement imagination’ of Francis. Petrarch made
the most famous declaration of this in 1366, in a letter to Tommaso Garbo, a
humanist doctor friend:
Concerning the stigmata of St. Francis, this is certainly the origin: so assiduous
and profound was his meditation on the death of Christ that his soul was filled
up with it, and appearing to himself to be also crucified with his Lord, the force
of that thought was able to pass from the soul into the body and leave visibly
impressed in it the traces.39
Francis of Assisi, ‘The Admonitions’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ch. 5; 132.
35
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, ‘The Major Legend of Saint Francis’, in Francis of Assisi:

36
Early Documents. vol. II (1999).

37
Cf. Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate, 210–16.
38
‘Acta inquisitoris Umbriae Fr. Angeli de Assisio contra stigmata S. Francisci negantem
contra fraticellos aliosque, a. 1361’, ed. Livarius Oliger, Archivum franciscanum historicum 24
(1931), 63–90; cf. Vauchez, ‘Les stigmates’, 619.
39
Petrarca, Lettere senili (1868), VIII, lettera 3, 465; Vauchez, ‘Les stigmates’, 625.
English translation from Davidson, ‘Miracles’, 118.
This is nothing less than the germ of the modern psychosomatic explanation –
an explanation that critical observers of the cult of Saint Francis’ stigmata raised
as early as the thirteenth century, especially by the rival mendicant order, the
Dominicans. ‘Ardent imagination’ (vehemens imaginatio) figures in one of the
four sermons James of Voragine dedicated to the stigmata of St Francis, and
refers to a broader set of medieval medical theories discussing the possible
impacts of imagination upon the transformation of the body, such as the antique
example of a woman giving birth to an Aethiopian child from a white man
just because during the intercourse when she conceived the child she had an
image of an Aethiopian (that is, black man) before her eyes.40 The hypothesis of
vehemens imaginatio being the cause of Francis’ stigmata annoyed Franciscans
to the point of presenting a detailed rebuttal of this interpretation in the
quodlibet discussion by Pierre Thomas in Paris around 1320.41 Nevertheless,
the argument has remained until our time, it was popularized again in the
Renaissance by Pietro Pomponazzi in his treatise On incantations42 and until our
day this is one of the possible fields of compromise between natural-rational and
religious explanations.
Illness and infirmity, however, became a special accompanying factor in the
lives of the subsequent females stigmatized who followed in the footsteps of
Saint Francis and claimed to have benefitted of the same grace in the course of
their fervent devotion to Christ’s Passion. I show here a selection of the most
noteworthy of them. As you can see from the denominations, most of these
female stigmatics came from the two major late medieval orders that were rivals
of the Franciscans: the Cistercians and the Dominicans; including the Beguines
advised by them, and later, Tertiaries affiliated to them; the Augustinian Clare of
Montefalco (1268–1308) was the only medieval exception. I will not enter the
interesting issue of this rivalry here, but have chosen only a few examples which
might throw additional light upon the relationship between illness or physical
infirmity and the claim of having been stigmatized.
The first spectacular example of a new female stigmatic, with detailed
documentation, came from the Low Countries. In 1267 Philip of Clairvaux,
40
Jacobus de Voragine, ‘Sermo III de stigmatibus S. Francisci’, in Testimonia minora
saeculi XIII de S. Francisco Assisiensi, ed. Leonhard Lemmens (1926), 113; cf. Carolyn
Muessig, ‘The Stigmata Debate in Theology and Art in the Late Middle Ages’, in The
Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400–1700, eds
Celeste Brusati, Karl Enenkel and Walter Melion (2012), 484–6.
41
E. Longpré, ed., ‘Fr. Rogeri Marston et Anonymi Doctoris O.F.M. quaestiones
ineditae de B. Francisci stigmatibus’, Antonianum 7 (1932): 239–44; ‘Petrus Thomae on
the Stigmata of St. Francis’, edited by G.E. Mohan, Franciscan Studies 8 (1948): 285–94;
Alain Boureau, ‘Miracle, volonté et imagination: La mutation scolastique (1270–1320)’, in
Miracles, prodiges et merveilles au Moyen Age (1995), 159–73.
42
Pietro Pomponazzi, De incantationibus (2011).
from the Cistercian abbey of Herkenrode, diocese of Liège, reported that a

Beguine named Elizabeth, living nearby in the village of Spalbeek, ‘bore most
openly the stigmata of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, in her hands, feet, and
side, without ambiguous simulation or doubtful fraud. The visibly open, fresh
wounds are bleeding frequently and especially on Fridays’.43 Besides her stigmata,
the other remarkable feature of this devout woman, who had been ailing and
confined to her bed and hardly able to move since the age of five (because of
the ‘feebleness of her body and limbs’ she could not even flee by herself from a
house fire), was that she regularly performed on Fridays, at the seven canonical
hours, the scenes of Christ’s passion in a trance state, representing the different
personalities with vivid movements, in front of a sizeable audience gathered
around her. The limbs of her sick and bleeding body thus became, in the words
of Philip of Clairvaux, ‘a vivid and unmistakable Veronica, a living image and an
animated history of redemption’.44
At precisely the same time, another stigmatic Beguine showed up near
Cologne, Christina of Stommeln (1242–1312), ‘discovered’ and advised by
a Dominican friar called Peter of Dacia, originally from Gotland. He met
Christina in 1267 and visited her 13 times before leaving for Paris in 1269, and
came back to her several times in the subsequent two decades, when he was prior
in Visby. He provided – together with several local churchmen – a vivid account,
an impressively rich set of testimonies about the extraordinary virtues and the
horrible tribulations Christina went through. Her frequent ecstasies were
accompanied by divine visions and the appearance of bleeding stigmata on her
body in 1267. Other wounds and physical attacks to her body were attributed to
diabolic aggressions violently throwing her against the wall, beating, scratching
her, covering her with excrement or other vile things, which were subsequently
healed by Christ. Her body became, so-to-speak, a battleground of divine and
diabolic intrusion.
‘Vita Elizabeth sanctimonialis in Erkenrode’, in Catalogus codicum hagiographicum

43
bibliothecae Regie Bruxellensis, vol. 1, ed. Hagiographi Bollandiani (1886), 362–78, at 363;
Walter Simons and Joseph Ziegler, ‘Phenomenal religion in the thirteenth century and its
image: Elisabeth Spalbeek and the Passion cult’, in Women in the Church, eds W.J. Sheils and
Diana Wood (1990), 117–26; Walter Simons, ‘Reading a saint’s body: Rapture and bodily
movement in the vitae of thirteenth-century Beguines’, in Framing Medieval Bodies, eds Sarah
Kay and Miri Rubin (1994), 10–23; Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits. Divine and Demonic
Possession in the Middle Ages (2003); Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman. Female Spirituality and
Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (2004), 186–9; Jesse Njus, ‘The Politics of
Mysticism: Elisabeth of Spalbeek in Context’, Church History 77 (2008): 285–317.
44
‘Vita Elizabeth sanctimonialis in Erkenrode’, 364, 373; Carolyn Muessig,
‘Performance of the Passion: The Enactment of Devotion in the Later Middle Ages’, in
Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts, ed. Elina Gertsman
(2008), 130–31.
The documentation also reveals that the Beguines of Cologne, with whom
she spent several years, had little appreciation of such positive and negative
supernatural experiences and considered her simply an epileptic and a fool
(fatua).45 As for the former, this ‘lay’ diagnosis, as Christine Ruhberg and Aviad
Kleinberg have demonstrated in their fine analyses,46 may not fully match modern
medical understanding of the symptoms of this illness, but a psychosomatic
basis for these troubles certainly cannot be excluded. What is more important,
however, was that the suffering, the ‘passion of Christina’, as Kleinberg puts it,
took on a religious meaning, which brought her closer to the Passion of Christ,
and also helped the onlookers, her spiritual directors and devotees to have a
concrete experience of this mystique of pain.
My third example is the life of Lukardis von Oberweimar (1262–1309), a
Cistercian nun who, from the age of 12, was stigmatized in 1281 and lived with
the marks, ailing in bed in her convent most of the time, for almost three decades.
The testimonies on her are not as abundant as those on Christine of Stommeln;
the only information about her is the legend written by an anonymous author
relying upon the testimonies of her two Dominican confessors. This Vita,
however, provides copious details on her illnesses, which stretched through her
whole life.
Her health problems started two years after her arrival at the monastery, with
pains of kidney stones, fevers and fainting spells. ‘When she lay in bed, her legs
would sometimes fasten together underneath her, and her head would be thrown
back, her belly and chest uplifted, so that she formed the shape of a very curved
arch’. She also stood on her head with her legs in the air, ran around or revolved
in her bed – it is no wonder that some thought she was ‘troubled by some spirit’.47
In an insightful analysis Aviad Kleinberg remarks that this kind of compulsive
behaviour is quite reminiscent of what Jean-Martin Charcot and his disciples
characterized in the nineteenth century as the bodily symptom of what they
called hysteria, the famous arc en cercle.48 The suspicious illness later constrained
45
Petrus de Dacia, Vita Christinae Stumbelensis (1985), 111f.
46
John Coakley, ‘Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican
Hagiography’, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, eds Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
and Timea Szell (1991), 222–45; Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country.
Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (1992), 40–98; Christine
Ruhberg, Der literarische Körper der Heiligen. Leben und Viten der Christina von Stommeln
(1242–1312) (1995).
47
Vita venerabilis Lukardis (1899), 312–13. In the presentation of her life I follow the
reconstruction by Kleinberg, Prophets, 99–121.
48
Kleinberg, Prophets, 102; on Charcot see Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention de
l’Hystérie: Charcot et l’Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière (1982); Jan E. Goldstein,
‘The Hysteria Diagnosis and the Politics of Anticlericalism in Late Nineteenth-Century
France’, Journal of Modern History 54 (1982): 209–39.
her to remain in bed ‘as a paralytic … almost crippled’ (tanquam paralytica …

quasi contracta)49 for 11 years – a symptom Kleinberg tried to approach as what
is labelled in modern times as ‘hysterical paralysis’ or ‘spastic paraplegia’. Then
she was healed by the Virgin from this total contraction and entered a stage that
could be labelled ‘flaccid paraplegia’, with intermittent periods of remission.50
What interests us here above all is not these questionable diagnoses, but how
her suffering and infirmity was interpreted and framed by the religious devotion
to Christ’s Passion. The legend gives an account of a vision of hers in the year of
1279, which is maybe the most eloquent medieval text we have of such an issue.
After having frequently prayed to God, as many contemporary devout women,
to be allowed to participate in Christ’s suffering, she saw him in her vision nailed
to the cross, bleeding. She prostrated herself at his feet, and heard:
‘Rise up and help me’. By this she understood that she must help him not only
by the memory of his Passion, but by diligent co-suffering. Having regained her
powers somewhat at Christ’s words, she answered timorously: ‘How can I help
You, my Lord?’ And raising her eyes, she saw his right arm loosened from the
cross, miserably hanging down, by which it seemed to her that the pain of the
suffering Christ was greatly intensified. Approaching him with great compassion,
the beloved handmaiden tried to tie the arm back to the cross with a silken thread,
but could not succeed. She then began to lift his arm with her hands and, with
groans, to hold it in place. The Lord then said to her: ‘Attach your hands to my
hands and your feet to my feet and your breast to my breast, and thus shall I be
helped by you to find relief ’. Once the handmaiden of God had done this, she
instantly sensed within herself the harshest pain of wounds in her hands, feet and
breast, even though no wounds were visible to the eyes […]51
This vision changed the life of Lukardis, her suffering took on new meaning. Her
passion was likened to Christ’s Passion in this mystical and also corporeal union,
which consequently had similar redemptive features. More than that, by taking
upon herself the pains of the crucified Lord, as a shaman or a folk healer would
claim to heal by touching the ill parts and sucking out the ‘illness spirit’ from the
ailing, she could have the conviction of supporting Christ by her stigmatic pains.
The Vita then provides a description of how she tried to bore into the places of
the aching, but invisible stigmatic wounds with her fingers and toes, and how
after two years, with a renewed apparition of Christ as a delicate youth, pressing
Vita venerabilis Lukardis, 314.

49
Edward Shorter, The Troubled History of Doctors and Patients (1986), 559–64;
50
Kleinberg, Prophets, 101–3; these ‘modern’ diagnoses should be treated, of course, with
caution.
51
Vita venerabilis Lukardis, 314; Kleinberg, Prophets, 104.
his hand against hers, visible stigmata really appeared, first the five wounds, then
the scars of the flagellation and the Crown of Thorns.52
The interaction between the crucified Lord and the devout women is
reminiscent of the many medieval instances when the life-size crucifixes come
alive and communicate with the believers praying in compassion in front of
them; Jacqueline Young has recently analysed the Lukardis’ vision in the context
of these moving crucifixes.53 Piroska Nagy has dedicated another important

study to Lukardis,54 examining these visions from the point of view of the
history of emotions, calling attention (like Young) to the importance of tactile
experience in this account of stigmatization. While it was precisely in these
decades that Giotto came to represent the stigmatization of Saint Francis with
five rays emanating from Christ’s wounds and piercing the body of Francis (a
representation which remained very influential in most subsequent accounts
of stigmatization),55 Lukardis actually touched the wounds of Christ, and the
wounds were also transferred by touching – this did not become a model, but
exemplifies quite well this paralytic living saint’s yearning for a tactile contact
with the supernatural. In other apparitions Jesus touched and caressed her and
blew the Holy Spirit into her by kissing her on the mouth; the Virgin Mary
feeds her from her breast, and Saint John Baptist adorned her neck with a
golden necklace.
A last thing to note about the stigmata of Lukardis is that her stigmata – like
those of the Flemish Beguine Elisabeth Spalbeek a few decades earlier – bled
with a liturgical periodicity; on Sundays her pains decreased and scabs formed
over her wounds, on Fridays they increased again, the wounds exploded
and fresh blood flowed from them. Like a permanently recurring illness, this
kind of stigmatization kept on producing a series of recurrent symptoms for
the community that venerated this living saint, a prolonged passion which
maintained a living, pulsating memory of the passion of Christ in the community.
A considerable number of further female stigmatics could be enumerated
and analysed here from the late Middle Ages, in whose lives these Christ-like
wounds appeared in close connection with a physical impairment or a grave
52
Vita venerabilis Lukardis, 315–16.
53
Jacqueline Young, ‘The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture
in the Medieval Religious Imagination’, in Looking Beyond, Visions, Dreams, and Insights in
Medieval Art & History, ed. Colum Hourihane (2010), 203–41.
54
Piroska Nagy, ‘Sensations et émotions d’une femme de passion: Lukarde
d’Oberweimar († 1309)’, in Le sujet des émotions au Moyen Age, edited by Damien Boquet
and Piroska Nagy (Paris, Beauchesne, 2009), 323–53; idem., ‘Sharing Charismatic Authority
by Body and Emotions: The Marvellous Life of Lukardis von Oberweimar (c. 1262–1309)’,
in Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, eds Veerle
Fraeters and Imke de Gier (2014).
55
Cf. Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate, 210–16.
illness; but, for lack of space, let me just briefly refer to two Italian mystics. Claire
of Montefalco had special kind of stigmata: she claimed that the instruments of
the Passion of Christ had been imprinted on her heart during a vision, and she
complained of the pains she felt constantly after this.56 In the testimonies at her
canonization process – surprisingly – a ‘doubting Thomas’ made an appearance,
a friar called Tommaso Boni da Foligno who expressed grave doubts about her
supernatural experiences and claimed that her ecstasies originated from either
fraud or epilepsy.57 An additional note of interest for the medical history of her
case is the way her fellow nuns decided to verify her claim of having the arma
Christi imprinted on her heart: in an autopsy after her death they indeed found
these instruments shaped in the veins and muscles of her heart.58
Another impaired heart stigmatic was the Dominican tertiary, Margaret
of Città di Castello (1287–1320). She was born ‘blind, lame, deformed,
hunchbacked and a dwarf ’, was abandoned by her parents and taken care of by
pious laypeople, then by friars; after her death at 33, three miraculous ‘stones’
were found in her heart upon which the shape of the Holy Family was engraved.59
***
In the concluding part of my chapter I present another explanation of the origin

of stigmatic phenomena, one that has stirred up a significant debate recently,
relying upon the insightful propositions by Giles Constable on Attitudes Toward
Self-Inflicted Suffering in the Middle Ages.60 In 2002 Richard Trexler, in an
already mentioned provocative article entitled ‘The Stigmatized Body of Francis
of Assisi: Conceived, Processed, Disappeared’, proposed that Francis’ stigmata
must be understood in light of the practice of voluntary self-flagellation that
appeared around the beginning of the second millennium. By the time of Saint
Francis, he argued, a range of self-mutilating and -mortifying practices imitating
the Passion of Christ in a most corporeal way had the result that passion stigmata
on the bodies of holy men started to become a hagiographic convention.61
Trexler provides two examples from the eleventh and twelfth-centuries where
the results of the practices of this self-mutilating flagellation were described
56
Enrico Menestò, ed., Santa Chiara di Montefalco monaca agostiniana (1268–1308)
nel contesto socio-religioso femminile nei secoli XIII–XIV (2009); Cordelia Warr, ‘Re-reading
the relationship between devotional images, visions, and the body: Clare of Montefalco and
Margaret of Città di Castello’, Viator 38 (2007): 217–49.
57
Enrico Menestò, ed., Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco (1984),
434–6.
58
Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 176–9.
59
Cf. Warr, ‘Re-reading’.
60
Giles Constable, Attitudes toward Self-inflicted Suffering in the Middle Ages (1982).
61
Trexler, ‘The Stigmatized Body’.
in a way that they bore in their bodies the stigmata Iesu Christi (according to
the phrase of Saint Paul): the life of the Italian hermit Domenico Loricato
(d. 1060) written by Peter Damian, a great popularizer of the idea of penitential
self-flagellation,62 and the French abbot Stephen of Obazine (d. 1159), who
imposed the harshest penitential flogging on both his monks and himself.63
After reviewing a series of additional examples, Trexler analyses a series of cases,
when intensifying devotion to Christ’s holy wounds was expressed by outright

self-mutilation or self-crucifixion – a phenomenon also studied recently by Peter
Dinzelbacher.64 The most important among these is the exemplary Beguine,
Marie of Oignies (1177–1213), whose life was written by Jacques de Vitry, shortly
after her death. This account includes, among others, a description of how ‘she
cut out a large piece of her flesh with a knife’ in a state of ecstasy, ‘as if inebriated’,
a practice Jacques de Vitry finds rather to be admired than to be imitated.65 This
kind of stigmatic self-mutilation also occurred in a remarkable case in Oxford
during Holy Week in 1222: a public performance of self-crucifixion by a layman
playing Jesus, assisted by a laywoman playing Mary, which incurred a judicial
condemnation of the ‘pseudo-Christ’.66
The abundant documentation assembled by Trexler convincingly demon-
strated that this broader context must be considered seriously for understanding
the emergence of the late medieval cult of stigmata and stigmatized saints.
Nevertheless, Solanus Benfatti made a correct point in his response that despite
the general significance of the role of self-inflicted suffering and self-caused
Christ-like wounds, the problem remains that Saint Francis himself cannot be
considered a flagellant. His attitudes to the body (his own or those of other friars)
did not include this aspect and he rather opposed this well-known practice.67 It
could be emphasized, however, that for the female stigmatics and mystics of the
late Middle Ages, Trexler’s thesis is even more valid than for Saint Francis.
To give a sense of the intensity of self-torturing passion devotion, let me cite
a fourteenth-century (not stigmatized) Swiss Beghine, Elsbeth van Oye, who
62
Muessig, ‘Signs of Salvation’, 54–6.
63
Gert Melville, ‘Stephan von Obazine: Begründung und Überwindung charismatischer
Führung’, in Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaften im Mittelalter, eds Giancarlo Andenna,
Mirko Breitenstein and Gert Melville (2005), 85–102.
64
Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Diesseits der Metapher: Selbstkreuzigung und Stigmatisation
als konkrete Kreuzesnachfolge’, Revue Mabillon, 68 (1996): 157–81.
65
The Life of Marie d’Oignies by Jacques de Vitry, trans. Margot H. King (1986), 22;
Trexler, ‘The Stigmatized Body’, 480.
66
Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, ed.
Frederick Maurice Powicke (1964), vol. 2, 104–5; Matthaeus Parisiensis, Chronica majora,
ed. H.R. Luard, vol. III (1872); Dinzelbacher, ‘Jenseits der Metapher’, 163–4; Trexler, ‘The
Stigmatized Body’, 481.
67
Benfatti, The Five Wounds, 139–49.
describes in her Offenbarungen how she heard the Lord tell her: ‘You should
hang with my Son on the Cross, and in this sameness I will like you and will be
loving you …’ – ‘in the most bloody sameness’, she cared to add.68
Dominican spirituality especially developed self-mutilating passion
mysticism in this direction, following some influential spiritual directors such as
Venturino da Bergamo and Heinrich Suso (nicely analysed in a series of studies
by Jeffrey Hamburger).69 In the saintly career of Catherine of Siena, whose

cruel habit of self-flagellation is described by her confessor at length, this type
of asceticism did indeed become the foundation of her stigmatization, which
occurred in Pisa in 1375 according to the report in The Life of St Catherine of
Siena by Raymundus de Capua.70
Tommaso di Antonio da Siena, named Caffarini (1350–1434), a
Dominican friar living in of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, worked for
decades to gather materials to support the canonization of his compatriot,
Catherine, the stigmatized Dominican tertiary. Around 1415 he compiled a
Libellus de Supplemento to the legends of St Catherine where he added ample
documentation to her hagiographic material,71 and also a long Tractatus de
stigmatibus inserted as Chapter VII in the Libellus.72 The aim of this treatise
was to explain the ‘inexplicable desire of this virgin to conform to the passion of
Christ and become its expert on the basis of her own sensible experience’.
For concluding this chapter, what is interesting from Caffarini’s
argumentation, is that he developed a comprehensive explanation of stigmata for
supporting Catherine’s case, taken in a much broader sense than the Franciscans
would have liked. They continued to insist that the stigmatization of Saint
Francis was a unique event, a special grace of God, accorded only to him.
Peter Ochsenbein, ‘Die Offenbarungen Elsbeths von Oye als Dokument

68
leidensfixierter Mystik’, in Abendländische Mystik im Mittelter: Symposium Kloster Engelberg

1984, ed. Kurt Ruh (1986), 431: ‘Du solt bi minen sun hangen an dem krv’ze unt in
siner glicheit soltu mir gevallen, unt in siner glicheit sol ich dich minnonde werden … in
allerblutigste glicheit’. Idem., ‘Leidensmystik in dominikanischen Frauenklöstern des 14.
Jahrhunderts am Beispiel der Elsbeth von Oye’, in Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische
Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter, eds Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer (1988), 353–72.
69
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary. Art and Female Spirituality in
Late Medieval Germany (1998).
70
Raymundus de Capua, Vita Sanctae Catharinae Senensis. Legenda maior (1738),
coll. 866–70; 901–4.
71
Thomas Antonii de Senis ‘Caffarini’, Libellus de supplemento, Legende prolixe virginis
beate Catherine de Senis, (1974); Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco and Beverly Mayne
Kienzle, eds, A companion to Catherine of Siena (2012); Jefrey F. Hamburger and Gabriela
Signori, eds, Catherine of Siena, The Creation of a Cult (2013).
72
Caffarini, Libellus de supplemento, 121–266.
Caffarini assembled detailed arguments for the possibility of other religious

persons also receiving stigmata. He juxtaposed the way the most prominent
stigmatics known to him received these precious signs. Caffarini also supported
his claim with an ample collection ‘of all kinds of stigmata’ from Saint Catherine’s
legend and many similar motifs from the hagiographies of other saints. These
included scars from demonic vexations, self-flagellation or special signa received
in visions, such as wounds from the Crown of Thorns, from the Nails of the
crucifixion or the miraculous exchange of hearts with Christ. The long series
of precedents started with Dominic and Peter Martyr, and included Walter
of Strasbourg, Helen of Hungary, Clare of Montefalco, Gertrude the Great,
Margaret of Città di Castello, Birgitta of Sweden and others.
As Caffarini saw it, and with him late medieval Dominicans, participation in
Christ’s redemptive suffering is an enterprise open to many devout believers – a
more ‘democratic’ approach than that of late medieval Franciscans who insisted
on their unique privilege. In late medieval spirituality stigmatization was on
the way to become a privileged but – for the most devout – accessible way of
understanding and incorporating Christ’s Passion. This development could
explain the vogue of new female stigmatic sante vive at the turn of the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries in Italy: Lucia Brocadelli (da Narni), Osanna
Andreasi (da Mantova), Stefana Quinzani, Domenica Narducci (da Paradiso).73
But this movement of ecstatic Dominican tertiaries, ‘Savonarola’s women’, as
Tamar Herzig called them,74 hurt against a strong resistance, not only from the
side of the Franciscans, but also the ecclesiastical institutions in general.
This might be one of the reasons why various kinds of physiological and
psychological infirmities and illnesses continued to play a continuing and even
increasing role in many subsequent cases of stigmatization in early modern and
modern times, and as we have seen it continue to our present day.
***
Do we need a conclusion to this historical overview? I am not sure – this is an

inquiry in progress, with more open questions than definitely answered ones.
In any case, I hope to have provided a few instructive examples where
infirmity and illness was invested with a special religious significance, and shown
that stigmatization is an especially interesting phenomenon in this respect. The
unusual procedure for starting my investigation with the better documented
73
Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive. Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ‘400 e
‘500 (1990); idem., ‘Lucia da Narni e il movimento femminile savonaroliano’, in Girolamo
Savonarola da Ferrara all’Europa, eds Gigliola Fragnito and Mario Miegge (2001), 101–16 .
74
Tamar Herzig, Savonarola’s Women. Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (2008);
idem., Christ Transformed into a Virgin Woman. Lucia Brocadelli, Heinrich Institoris, and the
Defense of the Faith (2013).
modern and contemporary examples could be justified by the fact that the bodily
emulation of the pains of the suffering Christ has proved a central, although
extreme, religious manifestation within Roman Catholicism since the times
of Saint Francis of Assisi, where the points or reference (the Gospels and the
legends and artistic representations of previous stigmatics) constituted a rather
closed and repetitive tradition, especially as regards the individual, experience
of the stigmatics. While the religious, social and intellectual contexts of these
extraordinary, shocking miraculous manifestations, and the various apologetic
or critical discourses around them, were largely varied throughout history,75 the
bodily manifestations – including the problems of infirmity and illness – should
be compared in the longue durée.
Naturally, one should be very cautious not to impose modern medical
diagnoses to inadequately documented medieval or early modern cases. And
even in the better documented, more or less observable modern cases, such
diagnoses are very fragile and controversial. But the puzzle is fascinating, and a
systematic exploration of historical data could advance our understanding.
75
These changing religious, social and medical discourses have been examined in the
conference papers I have recently edited in a monographic issue of the Archivio italiano
per la storia della pietà: Gábor Klaniczay, ed., Discorsi sulle stimmate dal Medioevo all’età
contemporanea – Discours sur les stigmates du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine (2013).
Chapter 8
Imagery of Disease, Poison and Healing
in the Late Fourteenth-century Polemics
against Waldensian Heresy
Reima Välimäki
Introduction
Lepra est doctrina haereticorum falsa atque varia, vel Judaeorum infidelitas, sive
contaminatio peccatorum, […] Leprosi sunt haeretici Dominum Jesum Christum
blasphemantes. Leprosi in barba, id est, haeretici de incarnatione Salvatoris, vel
de sanctis apostolis prava sentientes. Leprosi toto in corpore, id es, qui et supra
blasphemiam suam in omnem scripturam seriem permiscentes.1
Leprosy is the false and diverse doctrine of the heretics, or faithlessness of the
Jews, or contamination of sins […] Lepers are heretics, who blaspheme Lord
Jesus Christ. Leprous in beard means heretics having perverse opinions about
incarnation of the Savior or about Holy Apostles. Leprous in the whole body
means those who mix their blasphemy in and over the whole Scripture.
As the quote from Hrabanus Maurus’ ninth-century encyclopaedia shows,

the body of the Church and its believers was considered to be under constant
attack, just like the human body, and there existed connections between the
ailments of body and soul. Among these a serious infection threatening both
the health of an individual soul and the well-being of Christian community was
heresy. Thus in the medieval concept of heresy and in the polemical language
composed to refute it, the imagery of disease, pestilence, infection and poison
and conversely healing and purification have a prominent place. The correlation
of disease, impurity and dissidence is the legacy of late Antique Christian
polemical rhetoric and ecclesiastical sanctions which prohibited interaction
1
Hrabanus Maurus, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, vol. CXI, ed. J.P.
Migne (1852), 502. All translations by the author, unless otherwise indicated.
with ‘diseased’ and contagious schismatics and heretics.2 As the excerpt from
a prominent Carolingian intellectual demonstrates, this view persisted as a
learned conception through the early medieval centuries when prosecution of
heretics was almost non-existent in Latin Christendom. When heresy started
from the eleventh century to be seen as a threat to the order in the Christian
society, the authors describing heresy deployed the imagery of disease and
pestilence together with other metaphors of corrupted dissidence.3

Analysis of the occurrence of such metaphors throughout the centuries, as
intriguing as it would be, is well beyond the scope of a single article, or would
easily become a mere survey of authors and works. Instead I shall confine my
study to the end of the fourteenth century and to a single heretical group:
Waldenses, a lay apostolic movement condemned heretical in the late twelfth
century because of unlicensed preaching.4 I argue that the rhetoric of disease
and infection, together with related vocabulary of filth and corruption, as well
as their counterparts healing and purification, were used in the late fourteenth
century anti-heretical literature to distinguish certain aspects of Waldensian
heresy, namely how it spread and was carried around in secrecy by Waldensian
preachers, so called ‘heresiarchs’. Although a common reservoir of biblical and
patristic metaphors was shared by medieval authors, the application of figurative
language was not haphazard. How authors experienced heresy at a certain
moment influenced their choice of language, which in turn shaped the perception
of heresy. Thus the descriptions of the clandestine Waldensian preachers differ
from those relating the outbreak of Hussite revolution in Bohemia, although
separated from each other only by few years.
This chapter thus complements the interpretations of the previous scholars
treating the comparison of heresy and disease. The most important scholarly
work on the topic is R.I. Moore’s essay from 1976, titled ‘Heresy as Disease’,
and concentrating on the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Moore sees imagery of
disease directing attitudes towards heresy primarily during the early encounter
and invention of high medieval heresies. According to him the metaphor,
although at times still used, loses its prominence in the period of inquisitions
against heresy, starting in the first half of thirteenth century, when the image of
heretics and heresy was increasingly formed through direct contact and more
precise knowledge on heterodox doctrines. Although Moore’s results can only
partially be applied to later texts, the notion that eleventh- and twelfth-century
Christian Jaser, Ecclesia maledicens: rituelle und zeremonielle Exkommunikationsformen

2
im Mittelalter (2013), 341.

3
R.I. Moore, ‘Heresy as Disease’, in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–
13th C.), eds W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (1976), 1–11.
4
For an overview on medieval Waldenses, see Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of
Holy Church in Medieval Europe (2000).
Imagery of Disease, Poison and Healing 139
authors adopted the patristic metaphor of disease and heresy is crucial to our
understanding of medical figurative language in the Middle Ages.5
Historian Lucy Sackville has extended the arguments of Moore into the
descriptions of the thirteenth century, arguing that the metaphor of corruption
and disease is used generically: ‘A generalized vocabulary of corruption and
infection is employed in the descriptions of heresy in what at times seems to
be an almost inadvertent manner’.6 Conversely, the development in the medical

vocabulary of faith was prominent in the emerging understanding of the
Church’s relationship to sin as comparable to the physician–patient relationship,
also an adaptation of patristic literature: sin was a disease, the sinner a patient
and Church, imitating Christ, a doctor.7 Concerning the same period, but
using also Spanish material, Emilio Mitre Fernández has arrived to similar
conclusions about heresy as disease and priests as healers of souls.8 As we shall
see, the understanding of inquisitor or priest as doctor healing the heretic has an
equivalent in late fourteenth-century texts, but the figurative language of disease
and infection was no longer used in an inadvertent manner, but oftentimes very
consciously to carry specific meanings.
The end of the fourteenth century was, especially in German-speaking
Europe, a period of intense persecution of Waldensian heretics,9 and related
composition of treatises against Waldensianism, along with the copying and
reading of older treatises. Not only does this prolific output make it instructive
to inquire if the imagery of disease had a significant status in contemporary
descriptions of heresy; in addition it is interesting because of the fundamental
importance and impact of the outbreak of bubonic plague (later known as the
Black Death) in 1347–48. With subsequent outbreaks, plague and pestilence
were a very real presence in late medieval culture.10
The most important text of the period – in terms of length, popularity, as
well as expertise of its author – is the treatise written by Celestine inquisitor
Petrus Zwicker in 1395. The work is usually known today as Cum dormirent
homines from its initial quote from the gospel of Matthew (13:25). Zwicker’s
treatise became one of the most popular anti-heretical treatises of the Middle
5
Moore, ‘Heresy as Disease’, 9–10.
6
Sackville, Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century: the Textual Representations
(2011), 171.
7
Sackville, Heresy and Heretics, 171–2.
8
Emilio Mitre Fernández, ‘Muerte, veneno y enfermedad, metáforas medievales de la
herejía’, Heresis: revue d’histoire des dissidences européennes 25 (1995): 63–84, esp. 82–4
9
While there is no comprehensive treatment of the prosecutions of heretics in the last
decade of the fourteenth century, the best survey is offered by Georg Modestin, Ketzer in der
Stadt: der Prozess gegen die Strassburger Waldenser von 1400 (2007), 1–12.
10
Klaus Bergdolt, Der schwarze Tod in Europa: die große Pest und das Ende des
Mittelalters (1994), 151–62, 207–22.
Ages, as there are around 50 extant manuscripts including Cum dormirent

homines or sections of it.11 In this article the references are based on the most
accessible printed edition, a reprint of Jesuit Jacob Gretser’s publication
(1613/1677).12 Representatives of the same era and cultural milieu include an
anonymous treatise Refutatio errorum,13 and a shorter tractate written probably
by Viennese theologian Petrus de Pilichdorf.14 Yet another anonymous treatise,
Attendite a falsis prophetis, was composed earlier, by 1390.15 Besides the works
See Peter Biller, ‘The Anti-Waldensian Treatise Cum Dormirent Homines of 1395
11
and Its Author’, in The Waldenses 1170–1530, Between a Religious Order and a Church
(2001), 264–9. See also the recent survey by Georg Modestin, who however relies completely
on Biller’s results with regards to the manuscript tradition: Georg Modestin, ‘The Anti-
Waldensian Treatise Cum Dormirent Homines: Historical Context, Polemical Strategy,
and Manuscript Tradition’, in Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536, eds Michael Van
Dussen and Pavel Soukup (2013), 211–29.
12
Petrus Zwicker, ‘[Pseudo]-Petri de Pilichdorf contra Haeresin Waldensium
Tractatus’ (hereafter: ‘Cum dormirent homines’), in Lucae tvdensis episcopi, Scriptores
aliqvot svccedanei contra sectam waldensivm, ed. Jacob Gretser, Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum
Patrum, et Antiquorum Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. Tom. XXV (1677), 277F–299G;
Jacob Gretser falsely attributed the work to Petrus de Pilichdorf, Viennese university
theologian contemporary to Zwicker. Evidence presented by Peter Biller in his dissertation
and subsequent publications has confirmed Zwicker’s authorship. See Peter Biller, ‘Aspects
of the Waldenses in the Fourteenth Century’, (1974), 354–62; Biller, ‘The Anti-Waldensian
Treatise’.
13
Peter Segl has tentatively proposed that Zwicker was the author of Refutatio errorum
as well, see Peter Segl, ‘Die Waldenser in Österreich um 1400: Lehren, Organisationsform,
Verbreitung und Bekämpfung’, in Friedrich Reiser und die ‘waldensisch-hussitische
Internationale’ im 15. Jahrhundert, eds Albert de Lange and Kathrin Utz Tremp (2006), 185,
n. 102; the text has been likewise published by Gretser, see Jacob Gretser, ed., ‘Refvtatio
Errorvm, quibus Waldenses distinentur, incerto Auctore’, in Lucae tvdensis episcopi, Scriptores
aliqvot svccedanei contra sectam waldensivm. Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, et
Antiquorum Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. Tom. XXV, (1677), 302G–307F. Gretser’s
print stops abruptly in the middle of the tenth chapter. The complete text includes a total
of 12 chapters, preserved e.g. in Augsburg Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 2o Cod. 338, fols
159r–70r. All sections relevant to the present topic are covered by Gretser’s print, and I cite
it. In my forthcoming dissertation I will treat the relationship of Refutatio Errorum and Cum
dormirent homines in greater detail.
14
Petrus de Pilichdorf, ‘Fragmentvm ex Tractatv Petri de Pilichdorff contra pauperes
de Lugduno’, in Lucae tvdensis episcopi, Scriptores aliqvot svccedanei contra sectam waldensivm.
Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, et Antiquorum Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. Tom.
XXV (1677), 299E–302F; cf. Biller, ‘The Anti-Waldensian Treatise’, 247–51.
15
Biller, ‘Aspects’, 261, 365; Peter Biller, ‘The Waldenses in German-Speaking Areas
in the Later Fourteenth Century: The View of an Inquisitor’, in The Waldenses, 1170–1530:
Between a Religious Order and a Church (2001), 290. The references are to a manuscript Stift
Sankt Florian XI 152, fols 48v–50v.
written at the end of the fourteenth century one must take into account two
treatises that, although written in the previous century, were still in active use
and were also later copied together with fourteenth-century texts. The first one is
a compilation against the enemies of the Church (heretics, Jews and Antichrist)
by an unknown author, known as Anonymous of Passau.16 Another important
treatise is De inquisitione hereticorum, written after 1253, and attributed by
Wilhelm Preger to German Franciscan David of Augsburg, an attribution which

is now considered to be very doubtful.17
Polemical descriptions of heresy have been sometimes read merely as masking
underlying political motives, which the historian must unravel.18 However, to
perceive a change in the application of these metaphors, it is more fruitful to
consider texts on heresy as representing the medieval typology and exegesis,
as proposed by Beverly Kienzle. Contemporary occurrences or persons are
foreshadowed by the Scriptures, and in their turn may foreshadow the end of
times.19 I have also been inspired by a flexible understanding of medieval topos,
proposed by Teemu Immonen. Topos should not be conceived self-evidently
as a convention of texts obscuring the historical facts. Rather, topos/locus is
in a very concrete way a place: a starting point to various, even contradictory
interpretations and explanations of a concept.20 In the case of anti-heretical
literature this means that an author could pick from a variety of metaphors,
some of which could lead into several different interpretations in the minds
of contemporary readers. Thus the careful reading of the metaphors can reveal
what aspects of heresy were stressed by certain authors or during certain periods,
and consequently, the function of heresy in contemporary culture. These
methodological guidelines recall Lucy Sackville’s views on reading descriptions
of heresy: instead of static topos she has tracked layering and accumulation of
16
References are to sections on Waldenses published in Quellen zur Geschichte der
Waldenser (1973), eds Alexander Patschovsky and Kurt-Victor Selge, 70–103.
17
Sackville, Heresy and Heretics, 139. References are to ‘Der Tractat des David von
Augsburg über die Waldesier’, ed. Wilhelm Preger, Abhandlungen der historischen Classe der
königlich bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 14 (1879): 203–35.
18
See e.g. Mark Gregory Pegg, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the
Battle for Christendom (2008), 51: ‘Raimon V [the Count of Toulouse], couching his blunt
political fears in the soaring apocalypticism of rebellious heretics poised to destroy his lands’.
19
Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ‘The Bestiary of Heretics. Imaging Medieval Christian
Heresy with Insects and Animals’, in Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science,
and Ethics, eds Kimberley Patton and Paul Waldau (2006), 104.
20
Teemu Immonen, ‘Building the Cassinese Monastic Identity: A Reconstruction of
the Fresco Program of the Desiderian Basilica (1071)’. PhD diss. University of Helsinki,
2012, 15.
certain elements in thirteenth-century literature, as well as adaptation of these

elements to the purposes of the text.21
Heretics and Lepers

Heresy had a special connection to one disease in particular, itself a symbol of

sin, corruption and depraved sexuality: leprosy.22 Leprosy was as much cultural
diagnosis as medical one, and actual leprosy caused by Mycobacterium leprae was
commonly confused with other skin diseases. To this was added religious and
moral shunning of leprosy, deriving from Leviticus and other Old Testament
examples.23 As the quote from Hrabanus Maurus demonstrates, this patristic
and biblical metaphor was used throughout the Middle Ages. Sometimes
the equation heretic = leper is used in a way implying that it was self-evident.
Anonymous of Passau, usually rather moderate in the use of polemical
metaphors, states bluntly that heretics ‘docent eciam in domibus leprosorum’.24
This not only links preachers of heresy and lepers, but the passage demonstrates
a commonplace notion of secret meeting places of heretics as nests of sin, decay
and disease; here articulated as leper-houses. As Sackville points out, this idea
was not confined to the literary world of polemical treatises but was manifested
in anti-heretical legislation as a requirement to destroy the physical shelters of
heretics – and consequently in actions taken by persecutors.25
In our period of interest these measures were implemented in Ödenburg
(Sopron) on 9 January 1401. The inquisitor Petrus Zwicker ordered the houses
where heretics had congregated to be demolished.26 Although the disease
Sackville, Heresy and Heretics, esp. 9, 175, 177.

21
The greater part of Moore’s article actually treats heresy and leprosy. See Moore,
22
‘Heresy as Disease’, 4–9.

23
Susan Zimmerman, ‘Leprosy in the Medieval Imaginary’, Journal of Medieval &
Early Modern Studies 38, no. 3 (2008): 559–61.
24
‘They teach in leper-houses’. Quellen, eds Patschovsky and Selge, 70.
25
Sackville, Heresy and Heretics, 126.
26
Würzburg, Universitätbibliothek, M. ch. f. 51, f. 24v: Item dicimus et summaliter
pronunciamus quod omnes domos in quibus heresiarche scilicet hospicia sunt aut pro quolibet
per hereticos aut hereticas intromissi a cristi fidelibus maledicti habeantur. Et ubi cristi fidelium
communitati magnum ex hac incomodum prouenerit funditus diruantur et in posterum
nullatenus reedificerentur, ut ibi sit perpetuo receptaclium sordium ubi prius fuit aliquando
latibulum hereticorum. This sentence, preserved in a late (1470s?) copy, has been edited by
Herman Haupt. My reading differs significantly only in one point. Haupt reads ‘aliquod
latibulum hereticorum’, according to my interpretation ‘aliquando’ is preferable. Cf. Herman
Haupt, ‘Waldenserthum und Inquisition im südöstlichen Deutschland seit der Mitte des 14.
Jahrhunderts’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 3 (1890): 401–3, quote 403.
metaphor is not explicit, the parallel of heretical community and pollution is

implicit. The symbolism of filth is loaded into the sentence: ‘ut ibi sit perpetuo
receptaculum (ms: receptaclium27) sordium, ubi prius fuit aliquando latibulum
hereticorum’. Interestingly Zwicker uses almost identical language to earlier
inquisitorial sentences and legislation. Orvieto formulary from mid-thirteenth
century, quoted by Sackville, ‘condemns a house as a “perpetual refuge of filth,
where at times there was a den of heretics”’.28 The crucial word here is receptaculum
sordium. Sackville translates it as ‘refuge of filth’. The former house of heretics
should thus be remembered as a symbolic place of filth and corruption. This
certainly was the goal of inquisitors. However, the means may have been
more tangible than simply a declaration of sentence. Receptaculum sordium
can be translated in more concrete sense, and I am arguing that at least in the
case of the Ödenburg sentence by Zwicker this is a more likely interpretation.
Receptaculum sordium is simply ‘rubbish dump’, ‘compost-heap’ or even ‘sewer’.
In the seventeenth-century dictionary by Jesuit Michael Pexenfelder the
word is explained as follows: ‘Schwindgrube/cloaca, receptaculum sordium’.29
Receptaculum sordium appears as translation for Schwindgrube also in a German
dictionary by Caspar von Stieler (1691).30 Indeed, the dungheap was considered
to be a fitting resting place for a heretic; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas
Arundel in a letter (1411) to Pope John XXIII expressed a wish to throw John
Wycliffe’s bones onto such, although a different Latin word sterquilinium
is used.31
Consequently I would propose to translate ‘ut ibi sit perpetuo receptaculum
sordium, ubi prius fuit aliquando latibulum hereticorum’ as ‘so that there would
27
The last letters of the word are unclear, but based on the context and similarity of the
phrase in other inquisitorial sources it seems obvious that receptaculum is the intended word.
The copy has many other scribal errors.
28
Perpetuum receptaculum sordium, ubi fuit aliquando latibulum hereticorum. Sackville,
Heresy and Heretics, 126, translation by Sackville; the destrucion of houses was common
additional punishment for condemned heretics, and the wording of the sentence originates
from legislation given by Popes for Italian communes in thirteenth century. See Sascha Ragg,
Ketzer Und Recht : Die Weltliche Ketzergesetzgebung des Hochmittelalters unter dem Einfluss
des Römischen und Kanonischen Rechts (2006), 108, 145, 150. The model was available for
Zwicker through an inquisitor’s manual containing earlier French and Italian legislation
and used by Zwicker in 1390s. About the manual, see Alexander Patschovsky, Quellen zur
böhmischen Inquisition im 14. Jahrhundert (1979), 93–4, 130–54.
29
Michael Pexenfelder, Apparatus Eruditionis tam rerum quam verborum per omnes
artes et scientias. Ed. 4. auct (1704), 138.
30
Caspar von Stieler, Der Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum und Fortwachs oder Teutscher
Sprachschatz (1691), 689.
31
H.E. Salter, ed., Snappe’s Formulary and Other Records (1924), 135; Cf. Michael Van
Dussen, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages
(2012), 99.
forever be a waste-heap, where once before was a hiding-place of heretics’, thus

transforming a demolished home of heretics into a community dump. Dumping
waste in the ruins was by no means uncommon in medieval towns – abandoned
constructions and wells were used as waste deposits in addition to actual
latrines,32 but here it is explicitly decreed as part of the punishment for heresy.
Furthermore, the houses could by no means be rebuilt (‘in posterum nullatenus
reedificerentur [sic.]’), unlike other ruins or empty plots in the town. These
very tangible measures in no way undermine the metaphorical interpretation
of houses of heretics as places of filth, corruption and disease. On the contrary,
the sentence makes the literary concept of heresy and heretics visible in everyday
urban environment. The existence of a compost-heap should remind the
parishioner that already before there was a den of corruption and filth in the
place of the waste, although back then in spiritual sense.
Petrus Zwicker explicitly describes heretics as leprous in Cum dormirent
homines: ‘ergo percussus es lepra, ut Ozias, qui accepto thuribulo, voluit adolere
incensum Domino. 2 Paral. 26’.33 This merits closer examination, especially
because figurative language of disease in a strict sense does not appear elsewhere
in Zwicker’s treatise, and generally speaking Cum dormirent homines is dry
and doctrinal rather than demonizing and zealous. Why then choose a strong
figure of leprosy? The answer lies in Zwicker’s strategy of argumentation and
invocation of the Bible, not in his conviction that God would strike heretics with
leprosy. The revilement of leprosy appears in the chapter where Zwicker refutes
Waldensian claims of being equal to ordained clergy or inheriting pastoral
authority directly from God and the Old Testament character Uzziah relates
to this thematic. Uzziah was the King of Judah, victorious and mighty as long
as he was afraid of God. Following his success he grew proud, and against the
warnings of priest Azariah and other priests he entered the temple, intending to
burn incense upon the altar, something which was reserved only to the priests,
‘sons of Aaron’, who were consecrated to that office.34 Neglecting the warning,
King Uzziah grabbed the censor, and leprosy rose up in his forehead, resulting in
his expulsion from office.
The parallel to heretics and the priesthood of Zwicker’s own days is thus
evident. Waldenses claimed that they were true followers of the Apostles and at
See e.g. Liisa Seppänen, ‘Rakentaminen ja kaupunkikuvan muutokset keskiajan

32
Turussa. Erityistarkastelussa Åbo Akademin päärakennuksen tontin arkeologinen aineisto’.

PhD diss. University of Turku, 2012, 871–2.
33
‘Thus you are struck by leprosy, like Uzziah who having taken the censer wanted to
burn incense for the glory of the Lord. 2. Chron. 26’. Zwicker, ‘Cum dormirent homines’,
279D.
34
Non est tui officii, Ozia, ut adoleas incensum Domino, sed sacerdotum, hoc est, filiorum
Aaron, qui consecrati sunt ad hujuscemodi ministerium. 2. Paral. 26:18. All direct quotes from
Bible follow Vulgate according to the Clementine Vulgate Project.
least equal or even superior to sinful and negligent clergy of the Church and that
they enjoyed such a great reputation among their followers.35 Zwicker confronts
this claim, and does it using the indisputable authority of the Scriptures. If even
a victorious king, first blessed and aided by God, could not usurp the power
reserved for the consecrated priests, how then could simple laymen think that
they could consecrate themselves, and even pretend that they are sent by God?
Such insolence caused God’s revenge, not his blessing. In demonstrating this
Zwicker could again rely on anti-heretical tradition: the same biblical quote
appears in a similar context also in the treatise of Anonymous of Passau, though
only in passing.36
What we see here is the opposite of generalizing, reflex or repetitive use of
topos heresy as disease. When a Waldensian heretic is represented as ‘struck by
leprosy’, the description becomes topos/locus which concentrates the plurality
of meanings and interpretations: Waldenses claim authority that belongs
to consecrated clergy, and thus are like Uzziah, who wants to burn incense
himself. Like Uzziah they do it against the warnings of rightful guardians of this
sacred power, priests. This can be read referring to Zwicker himself and other
inquisitors – were they not showing error in the ways of heretics? Subsequent
punishment, leprosy, simultaneously proves that the monopoly claimed by
priests is God’s will, and that those acting against it are damned. The established
parallel heresy–leprosy adds yet another layer, evoking the images of impurity,
depravity and revulsion attached to lepers in medieval culture. In only one
short quote Zwicker manages to undermine the Waldensian claim, reinforce the
authority of the clergy and justify punishment of obstinate heretics. Zwicker
continues: ‘Deglutit te terra, id est infernus, ut Dathan & Abiron’.37
Poisonous Heretics
While Zwicker and others writing against Waldenses use imagery of pestilence
and leprosy sparingly, there is another metaphor of infection that is very
35
On the Waldensian lay apostolate and Zwicker’s response see Kathrin Utz Tremp,
‘Multum abhorrerem confiteri homini laico. Die Waldenser zwischen Laienapostolat und
Priestertum, insbesondere an der Wende vom 14. zum 15. Jahrhundert’, in Pfaffen und Laien,
ein mittelalterlicher Antagonismus? (1999); Modestin, ‘The Anti-Waldensian Treatise Cum
Dormirent Homines’, 219–20.
36
Patschovsky and Selge, Quellen, 90: Ozias fit leprosus, quia usurpat sibi sacerdocium;
the treatise of Anonymous of Passau was a probable source of Zwicker’s work, see Biller,
‘The Anti-Waldensian Treatise’, 256–61; Biller, ‘The Waldenses in German-Speaking Areas’,
272–3.
37
‘You are swallowed up by earth, that is, hell, like Dathan and Abiram’. Zwicker, ‘Cum
dormirent homines’, 279D.
commonplace: heresy as poison and poisoning.38 In Zwicker’s texts it appears

several times: haeresiarchae sectae Waldensium haereticorum plurimam Christi
fidelium multitudinem suis peruersis doctrinis, sub quibusdam simulatae sanctitatis
dulcedinibus errorum veneno mortifero lethaliter infecerunt.39 The heresiarch is a
venomous frog (rana venenosa),40 and the ‘little women’ (mulierculae) helping
him spread his poison to others: venenum bibitum de te taliter consueverunt in
alios fundere.41 The metaphor of poisoning is forcefully used by Zwicker also

in his letter to the Austrian Dukes (1395) in order to invoke their support: et
timendum est sectam illam valde dilatari plurimosque catholicos utriusque sexus
ab orthodoxa fide abduci et ab hereticorum veneno letaliter infici nisi eis obstitum
fuerit ab acie christiana.42
As Peter Biller has pointed out, the prevailing image Zwicker creates through
the metaphor of poison, poisoning and venomous animals is that of working
in secrecy, hidden either by pretended sanctity or taking shelter at night and
subterranean places.43 Here Zwicker could again be drawing on a long tradition
of anti-heretical, especially anti-Waldensian literary conventions. A succinct
exemplification is a description of new heresies by Pseudo-David of Augsburg:
Surrexerunt nove, latenter in angulis serpentes, nocivius venenum erroris

simplicibus infundentes, quo magis periculosum est malum occultum, quod
nescias cavere vel adhibere remedium, quam apertum, quod poteris effugere
et sanare.44
38
Heresy as poison is yet another metaphor of Augustine adopted by high and late
medieval authors; see Irene Bueno, ‘False Prophets and Ravening Wolves: Biblical Exegesis
as a Tool against Heretics in Jacques Fournier’s Postilla on Matthew’, Speculum 89, no. 01
(2014): 54.
39
‘The heresiarchs of the sect of Waldensian heretics lethally infect the greatest
multitude of Christ’s believers with their perverse doctrine, the death-bringing poison of
errors under the sweetness of pretended sanctity’. Zwicker, ‘Cum dormirent homines’, 278A.
40
Zwicker, ‘Cum dormirent homines’, 279G.
41
‘So they are accustomed to pour into others the poison they have drunk from you’.
Zwicker, ‘Cum dormirent hominess’, 280D.
42
‘It is to be afraid that this sect should greatly expand and that a great many Catholics
of both sexes would be led astray from the orthodox faith and infected lethally with the
poison of heretics, should they not be opposed by Christian blade’. Wilhelm Preger, Beiträge
zur Geschichte der Waldesier im Mittelalter (1877), 246.
43
Biller, ‘The Waldenses in German-Speaking Areas’, 276–8; On a more general level,
see Sackville, Heresy and Heretics, esp. 172–4, 176–7; and Florence Chave-Mahir, ‘Venenum
sub melle latet. L’image du poison dans le discours anti-hérétique au Moyen Âge’, Cahiers de
recherches médiévales et humanistes 17 (2009): 161–72.
44
Preger, ‘Der Tractat des David von Augsburg’, 204.
The new [heresies] have arisen, crawling secretly in corners, pouring onto simple
laymen the more harmful poison of error, for much more perilous is hidden evil,
which you do not know how to avoid or how to apply remedy to it, than public,
from which you can escape or that you can heal.
Authors of the late fourteenth century clearly found venom and poisoning to be
suitable metaphors to describe heresy. In addition to above-mentioned quotes

from Zwicker, heretics are called ‘venomous serpents’ (venenosi serpentes) by
Petrus de Pilichdorf.45 In an anonymous treatise Refutatio errorum Waldenses
are accused of introducing the venom of heretical articles with ‘honey-sweetened
sentences’.46 Attendite a falsis prophetis-treatise likens the teachings of heretics to
the gall of dragons and incurable venom of asps described in the Old Testament
(Deut. 32:33).47 Venom as metaphor of spiritual corruption was widespread and
understandable also to Zwicker’s adversaries, Waldensian brethren – and it was
even sometimes used by them.48
Like the leprosy image used by Zwicker, neither was the application of poison
metaphors simply a casual motif adopted from earlier treatises. Representations
of heretics as poisonous serpents and propagation of heresy as infection with
poison were intimately connected to how inquisitors and theologians perceived
Waldensian heresy at the end of the fourteenth century. This becomes evident
when one compares the frequency of poison metaphors to the virtual non-
existence of another commonplace image of heresy: pestilence or plague (pestis).49
R.I. Moore has demonstrated how heresy was in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries commonly described as a pestilence ravaging the land and threatening
to overcome the Christians. He has also proposed that after the beginning of
inquisitorial proceedings against heretics the concept of heresy and with it
the figurative language describing it changed so that disease metaphor lost its
45
Petrus de Pilichdorf, ‘Fragmentvm Ex Tractatv Petri de Pilichdorff ’, 302C.
46
Gretser, ‘Refutatio Errorum’, 303A: His tamen sententiis mellitis venenum iniquitatis
Articulorum haereticorum, per sanctam Romanam Ecclesiam reprobatorum inferunt, simplices
decipiunt, animarum salutem subtrahunt, & furantur, & infinita mala introduncunt. On the
metaphor of honey and poison, see Chave-Mahir, ‘Venenum sub melle latet’, 164.
47
Stift Sankt Florian Cod. XI 152, fol. 48v: fel draconum vinum eorum et venenum
aspidum insanabile.
48
See the corresponcence between Italian and Austrian Waldensian brethren in
1360s, edited in Biller, ‘Aspects’, here 284. Waldenses saw the beginning of their history in
Constantine Donation and subsequent corruption of the Church, demonstrated in a story of
a voice from heaven declaring ‘Hodie diffusum est vennum in ecclesia Dei’. Cf. also p. 348.
49
I have only encountered a few instances of heresy and heretics referred to as
pestiferus, ‘bringing pestilence or destruction’. See e.g. a provincial statute of John of Jenstein,
Archbishop of Prague, 1381: insunt haereses multum pestiferae […] contra tales pestiferos.
C. Höfler, ed., Concilia Pragensia = Prager Synodal-Beschlüsse (1862), 26.
prominence.50 The application of the pestilence metaphor, however, does not

diminish unremittingly. Little more than a decade after our period, with the
outbreak of conflict between the Catholic Church and the Hussites in Bohemia
as well as the Lollards in England, the comparison of heresy and pestilence seems
to acquire new popularity.51
Philip Repingdon, Bishop of Lincoln complained in a letter (1413) that
people of England could be infected with the ‘stinking plague of heresy’.52 This
was also known in the Curia, and corresponding rhetoric was used. Pope Martin
V, writing to English clergy in 1428, calls Hussites ‘pestifera et abominanda
haeresis’ (plague-bringing and abominable heresy), and uses pestis as a synonym
for heresy.53 The next Pope, Eugene IV, also uses the rhetoric of plague against
Hussites in his bull Quoniam alto (1431), stating how he watches ‘nephandum
ipsius heresis pestem pullulare in dies’.54
Thomas Ebendorfer, Viennese theologian and historian active in the middle
of the fifteenth century, also shows a fondness for the pestilence metaphor for
both modern and ancient heresies as well as for general immorality. He laments
how during schism ‘omnium viciorum pestes infrunite ebuliunt’,55 or tells how
Pope Liberius condemned two ‘Arriane pestis fautores’ (‘supporters of Arian
pestilence’).56 Even more interesting is Ebendorfer’s Chronicle of Bishops of
Passau, where he links the Waldensian heresy of the late fourteenth century to
Hussites of his own days, complaining that the indulgence of heretics in most
heinous crimes was manifested by ‘Bohemica rabies nostro infelici evo hac
Waldense peste infecta’.57
Moore, ‘Heresy as Disease’, 1–2, 10–11.

50
The following quotes do not reflect any comprehensive survey of polemical literature
51
against Hussites and Lollards, both of them vast areas of research, but simply exemplify the
robustness of the pestilence metaphor.
52
Ian Forrest, The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England (2005), 87.
53
Cit. in Michael Van Dussen, ‘Bohemia in English Religious Controversy before the
Henrician Reformation’, in Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, vol. 7, eds Zdeněk
V. David and David R. Holeton (2009), 48, n. 17.
54
‘The abominable plague of this heresy to sprout daily’. Joannes de Segovia, Historia
gestorum generalis synodi Basiliensis. Volumen I, Liber I–XII, ed. Ernestus Birk (1873), 68,
Lib. II. Caput III; Cf. Loy Bilderback, ‘Eugene IV and the First Dissolution of the Council
of Basle’, Church History 36, no. 3 (1967): 252.
55
Thomas Ebendorfer, Tractatus de Schismatibus, ed. Harald Zimmermann (2004), 5,
cf. 93: ‘Plagues of all vices senselessly break out’.
56
Thomas Ebendorfer, Tractatus de Schismatibus, 9.
57
Thomas Ebendorfer, Catalogus Praesulum Laureacensium et Pataviensium, ed.
Harald Zimmermann (2008), 227–8: ‘Bohemian fury of our unhappy times, infected by this
Waldensian pestilence’.
It is noteworthy that the Waldensian heresy described by Thomas Ebendorfer

acquires a completely different complexion from the clandestine movement
excoriated by Zwicker and his contemporaries. Even when describing from
his perspective historical Waldenses of the 1380s, Ebendorfer ascribes to them
deeds that remind him of the experiences with the Hussites: burning with
hatred towards clergy they defiled all sacraments and polluted holy shrines.58
Contemporary heretics were even worse: according to Ebendorfer, after the

outbreak of Hussitism the Waldenses also abandoned their clandestine methods
and took up arms.59 Ebendorfer’s description may indeed be referring some real
events during the initial phase of the Hussite revolution in the late 1410s, when
in many German towns in the vicinity of Bohemia Hussites found sympathizers
and citizens took action against clerics and churches.60 Whether Ebendorfer was
describing something he had witnessed or was simply indulging in polemical
exaggeration is not important to my argument, which is that in the political and
religious atmosphere marked by the Hussite problem, the imagery of pestilence
and plague was a fitting metaphor for the corresponding experiences of both the
author and his intended audience.
Why then did Zwicker or his contemporaries not use the metaphor of
pestilence and plague – certainly available to them – instead of that of infection
and poison? Again I suggest that it was question of matching figurative language
to one’s own argumentative strategy. We can best analyse this in Zwicker’s
texts. I agree with Peter Biller who has argued that Zwicker’s polemical
rhetoric did not seek to exaggerate the extent and power of heresy, but on the
contrary to undermine heretical claims of authority and apostolic succession by
demonstrating the insignificance of the supporters of Waldensian brethren.61 To
this program the metaphor of plague and pestilence was inappropriate, perhaps
especially so in a society that had witnessed several outbreaks of bubonic
plague and its consequences. However, refuting heretical propositions was not
Zwicker’s only aim. He also wanted to convince his fellow Catholics, laymen and
58
Thomas Ebendorfer, Catalogus Praesulum Laureacensium et Pataviensium, 227: Qui
odio in clerum inflammati omnia ecclesiastica sacramenta contaminant, sacras pollunt edes.
59
Thomas Ebendorfer, Chronica Austriae, ed. Alphons Lhotsky, in Scriptores Rerum
Germanicum. Nova Series 13 (1967), 362: Ibi quoque sumpta occasione Waldenses, qui usque
latuerunt, suas cervices erexerunt primum latenter suos inducentes errores, postea vero armata
manu defensare et alios ad eosdem visi sunt compellere.
60
Cf. Franz Machilek, ‘Aufschwung und Niedergang der Zusammenarbeit von
Waldensern und Hussiten im 15. Jahrhundert’, in Friedrich Reiser und die ‘waldensisch-
hussitische Internationale’ im 15. Jahrhundert, eds Albert de Lange and Kathrin Utz Tremp
(2006), 284–5.
61
Peter Biller, ‘Bernard Gui, Peter Zwicker, and the Geography of Valdismo or
Valdismi’, Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi – Bulletin de La Société d’Histoire Vaudoise
124, no. 200 ( June 2007): 41–2; cf. also Biller, ‘Aspects’, 125–6.
clerics alike, of the danger of heresy, hence the metaphors of poisonous words
masked as sanctity or creeping in shadows like a venomous frog and serpent.
In order to suggest a heretical sect that was weak and scattered but at the same
time potentially lethal to the Christian community, Zwicker preferred the
clandestine imagery of poison to the doomsday figures of plague. The metaphor
of pestis heresis had not lost its power, as the examples of fifteenth century prove;
it just wasn’t compatible with the image of heresy the polemical authors of the
late fourteenth century sought to convey.
Healing
The mirror image of the dangers of heretical disease and poison was the remedy
offered by priests and inquisitors. As stated above, this was intimately related
to the general vocabulary of pastoral care. The rhetoric found its way into
inquisitorial manuals, and often quoted examples can be found from the famous
Practica inquisitionis of Bernard Gui, where the inquisitor is represented as a
prudent doctor of souls, selecting proper medicines – ways of examining and
inquiring – for each disease.62 The German treatises written at the end of the
fourteenth century belong more to the genre of theological polemic than actual
inquisitor’s manuals. Consequently there is little theoretical treatment on how
to conduct an interrogation or how to be a good inquisitor, and little need of
metaphors of doctor, remedy and healing, though some examples can be found.
The Archbishop of Prague, John of Jenstein offered ‘oportuna remedia
adhibere’ (‘to apply suitable remedy’) should the inquisitors he urged to be
appointed in dioceses Regensburg, Misnia and Bamberg in 1381 encounter
any resistance. The remedy he had in mind was apparently a kind of shock
treatment, because he promised to deliver it with the help of the secular arm.63
There are however no traces of any trials or persecution resulting from this letter.
Refutatio errorum offers a more refined case of healing imagery. It is a part of an
answer to the Waldensian proposition that prelates of the Church do not have
authority to excommunicate anyone. Excommunication of rebellious members
of community is equated with amputating a putrid body part to stop further
infection, or separation of sick sheep from the flock to prevent contamination:
Item, Omni medicina spirituali & salutari vtendum est medicis spiritualibus
contra morbus spirituales vitiorum & peccatorum. Sed excommunicatio est
medicina. […] A corpore enim humano secatur membrum putridum, ne caetera
62
See e.g. Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans,
and Christianity in the Middle Ages (2009), 163–4.
63
Höfler, Concilia Pragensia = Prager Synodal-Beschlüsse, 26–7.
inficiat & a grege ouis morbida, ne caeteras contaminet. Item, a congregatione,

collegio & ciuitate separantur & eiiciuntur rebelles & contumaces, ne fermentum
malitiae paucorum totam massam corrumpat.64
All spiritual and health-giving treatment is to be used by spiritual doctors against

spiritual diseases of vices and sin. Also excommunication is a cure. […] From a
human body a putrid member is cut off so that it would not infect other parts, and
from a flock a sick sheep, so that it would not contaminate others. Likewise from
congregation, collegium or city rebellious and disobedient persons are separated
and cast off, so that the fermenting of evil would not corrupt the whole lump.
Again there was little literary innovation involved: amputation to protect

the rest of the body was a metaphor long used in anti-heretical literature. In
high medieval texts it often meant the action taken against the preachers of
heresy, heresiarchs, in order to protect the laymen, who were considered to be
simple and easily led astray.65 Similar rhetoric is to be found in the metaphor
of sheep flock, typically referring to the community of believers that were the
responsibility of pastors. Nevertheless it is worth noting that argumentation
here is not directed only against the heresiarchs, but to justify more generally the
clerical – actually episcopal – power to excommunicate disobedient members
from amongst their community. According to Refutatio errorum, an inquisitor
must be a ruthless doctor, prepared to use the severe measures: ‘Medicus autem
corporalis, non solum utitur lenitiuis, sed quandoque asperis; sic etiam facere
debet medicus animarum’.66
The imagery of healing is sparse in the texts treated here, and when it is
used, it does not represent a spiritual doctor examining the soul to find a proper
treatment, but that of a surgeon cutting off a rotting member. A more hopeful
prognosis is offered only to refute the Waldensian claim that there are no venial
sins but all sins are mortal:
Sicut non est ad mortem omnis infirmitas, vel vulnus coporale: sic nec omnis
laesio vel infirmitas animae est mortalis. Item sicut non omnis casus corporalis est
fractio colli & capitis: Ita nec est semper ad mortem casus spiritualis.67
64
Gretser, ‘Refutatio Errorum’, 305H.
65
See e.g. John H Arnold, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject
in Medieval Languedoc (2001), 19–23.
66
‘The Doctor of the body not only uses easing [treatments], but at times also severe
ones; similarly that is required from the doctor of the souls’. Gretser, ‘Refutatio Errorum’,
306A.
67
Gretser, ‘Refutatio Errorum’, 307B.
Just as not every sickness or bodily wound is lethal, neither is every injury or
sickness of the soul mortal. Likewise not every bodily fall causes fracture of the
neck and head; similarly not always is spiritual lapse lethal.
It goes without saying that heresy did not belong to these minor lapses, but was
counted among the most mortal spiritual diseases and the most lethal venoms.
Conclusions
In the imagery of late fourteenth-century polemicists like Petrus Zwicker, heresy

was not pestilence ravaging the Christian lands. It was an almost imperceptible
poison working invisibly. Yet it was no less dangerous, quite the contrary. The
spreading infection that threatened the body of the faithful was still found to
be a fitting comparison, but the polemicists clearly preferred the metaphor of
poison over pestilence or plague. It is difficult to say whether this choice was due
to the all-too-real presence of plague epidemics in the late fourteenth-century
Central Europe, or resulted from how the authors perceived the Waldensian
heresy. In any case it does not seem to be arbitrary, but a choice on the part of the
authors. This is further corroborated by the fact that the literary model of heresy
as pestilence was available, as it was revived in describing Hussites and Lollards
only few years after the polemics written against Waldenses.
All this demonstrates that medieval polemicists were not randomly pouring
fire and brimstone into their texts. When the experience of the heresy went
through a change, so did the figurative language, in turn further endorsing the
new perception of heresy. The difference between the poisoning Waldensian
preacher and the plague of the Hussites was not a simple rhetorical decoration.
The former implied individual agency, the latter uncontrolled uproar. It is
tempting to see a parallel to attempted remedies to the respective problems:
inquisitions against the Waldenses and a military solution in the Hussite Wars.
Correspondingly, the polemical language should not be seen as a veil obscuring
reality, but as an attempt by contemporaries to discern that reality.68
68
The author wishes to thank Prof. Bruce Johnson and the seminar group in the course
‘Publishing in English’ at the University of Turku for valuable comments on the draft-version
of this article in the Spring 2014.
Chapter 9
Infirmitas Romana and its Cure – Livy’s
History Therapy in the Ab urbe condita
Katariina Mustakallio and Elina Pyy
Introduction
In the ancient literary tradition the discourse concerning cultural decay is

usually connected with periods of crisis and with the breakdown of collective
identity. The idea of degenerative historical development was introduced into
classical literature as early as in the seventh century BCE– it was first applied
by the epic poet Hesiod, who utilized the concept to discuss the social changes
that challenged the traditional lifestyle of the rural upper class.1 Six hundred
years later, the moral decline of the people was a major theme in the work of the
Roman historian Titus Livius. Livy, too, lived during a transitional period – in
his case, between the Roman Republic and the Principate.2 By Livy’s lifetime
the bloody civil war, the proscriptions, murders and the political chaos had led
to deep disillusionment among Roman intellectuals. The Augustan authors
found the future difficult to imagine and many of them turned their minds to
the mythical past instead. Anxiety about the present and nostalgia for the past
can be clearly observed in Livy’s history, as well as in the poetry of his coevals,
Virgil and Horace.3
1
Hesiod, Erga kai Hemerai, 110–74. Ludwig Koenen, ‘Greek, The Near East, and
Egypt: Cyclic Destruction in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women’, Transactions of the
American Philological Association 124 (1994): 1–34.
2
The Republican period covers the time span from the expulsion of the kings
(traditionally in 509 BCE) to the beginning of the reign of Augustus in 27 BCE. Many
scholars, however, would push the end of the Republic back to Octavian’s triumph in the
great sea battle of Actium in 31 BCE, or even to Caesar’s invasion of Italy in 49 BCE. See
Harriet I. Flower, ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, ed.
H.I. Flower (2004), 1–11, at 2–3.
3
See e.g. Hor. Epod. 16; Od. 3.6. In Virgil’s epic, this characteristic is particularly
evident in the Bucolica, in the Georgica, and in the last three books of the Aeneid. See e.g.
Eve Adler, Vergil’s Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid (2003); Francis Cairns, Virgil’s
Augustan Epic (1989); Robert Gurval, Actium and Augustus. The Politics and Emotions
of Civil War (1995); Joseph Farrell, ‘The Augustan Period: 40BC–AD14’, in Blackwell
In the preface of the Ab urbe condita Livy makes clear the starting point of his
work. The present time is described as an era of ideological sickness. The author
doubts if there are any remedies to be found for the situation; the Roman Empire
might be a mortally sick patient with no chance of recovery. Nonetheless, Livy
states that there is one slim hope for the Romans – history and the lessons of the
past.4 The purpose of this chapter is to examine a little more closely what Livy
actually means by the sickness of the people, and what cures he believes can be
found in history.
What is intriguing is that the ‘sickness’ of Rome that Livy repeatedly mentions
in the Ab urbe condita appears less as a sickness (that is, a specific condition with
a certain cause) and more as a collective feebleness. The centuries of internal
and external conflicts followed by decades of civil strife have drained the state
and its institutions, along with the morals of the people. Rather than a specific
sickness, Livy’s vitia seems to be a condition that makes Rome prone to all kinds
of ills and malaise. In this chapter we utilize the concept infirmitas Romana
when speaking of this phenomenon – being quite aware that this concept is
ambiguous by nature and crucially dependent on the cultural point of view. The
Romans had different criteria for ‘strength’ and ‘weakness’ than that of Medieval
Europe, not to mention the modern world. However, since many of the Roman
ways of defining weakness carry through to later periods of time, we believe it is
essential to examine this pivotal period of crisis and reconstruction – the post-
civil war Principate – from the perspective of collective, psychological feebleness
that is the heart and soul of Livy’s history.
Livy the Moralist? Exemplarity in the Ab urbe condita
In a society that was desperately trying to move on and leave its painful
past behind, Livy’s history therapy, of course, was a delicate issue. In order
to understand the style and content of Livy’s work and his position in the
Augustan society, it is necessary to further consider the political, ideological and
moral aspects that influenced his ideas about the weakness and the cure of the
Roman people.
The Ab urbe condita can be considered the single most important
historiographical work that discusses the historical development of Rome and
the Republican government. It covers Roman history from the founding of the
Companion to Latin Literature, ed. S. Harrison (2005), 44–57, at 46–7; Elina Pyy, ‘Decus
Italiae virgo: Virgil’s Camilla and the Formation of Romanitas’, Arctos, 44 (2010): 181–20, at
193–6. For Livy’s choice of topic, see also Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (1939), 317
and 463.
4
Liv. Praef. 10.
Infirmitas Romana and its Cure 155
city up to Livy’s own day, 142 books in all. Unfortunately only 35 volumes of
this monumental work survive – the books that deal with the late Republic and
the civil war period are completely lost to us.5 Nevertheless, the early volumes
that focus on the regal period and the early Republic are very well preserved.
This is their value, what makes Livy indispensable, since his work is the only
source for most of our information about these periods.
For a long time modern research concerning Livy, and Roman historiography
in general, was focused on quellenkritik and on the authenticity of historical
details.6 In the latter part of the twentieth century the classicists gradually began
to turn away from source criticism and connect ancient historiography more
closely with its social and cultural background. The focus shifted from detecting
historical ‘facts’ to the examination of methods and agendas of the historian –
the scholars aimed at understanding what Livy and his contemporaries felt to be
important in their past, and why.7 This naturally led to an intense debate over the
relationship between the historian and the imperial regime, and about literary
freedom and political power.8 Over the decades Livy has been subject to his fair
share of simplistic generalizations, having been often categorized as a naïve and
optimistic celebrator of virtus Romana of the past.9
5
The surviving books 1–10 and 21–45 cover the period from 753 to 293 and from
219 to 167 BCE. D.S. Levene, ‘Roman Historiography in the Late Republic’, in Blackwell
Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, ed. J. Marincola (2007), 275–89, 277;
Andreas Mehl, Roman Historiography: An Introduction to Its Basic Aspects and Development
(2011), 100–101; John Marincola, ‘Introduction’, in Blackwell Companion to Greek and
Roman Historiography, ed. idem. (2007), 1–10, at 1. As Roberto Nicolai states, the readership
of Livy was limited due to the extent of his work; there are, however, brief summaries, the
Periochae, to almost all the remaining books. Nicolai, ‘The Place of History in the Ancient
World’, in Blackwell Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, ed. John Marincola
(2007), 13–26, at 23.
6
Marincola, ‘Introduction’, 3. For a brief overview on Livy’s sources, see Mehl, Roman
Historiography, 104–5.
7
Marincola, ‘Introduction’, 2–4; Matthew B. Roller, ‘The Politics of Aristocratic
Competition: Innovation in Livy and Augustan Rome’, in Writing Politics in Imperial Rome,
eds W.J. Dominik, J. Garthwaite and P.A. Roche (2009), 153–72: 151, 156.
8
Roller, ‘The Politics’, 155; see also Adler, Vergil’s Empire; Cairns, Virgil’s Augustan
Epic; Frederick Ahl, ‘The Rider and the Horse: Politics and Power in Roman Poetry from
Horace to Statius’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 32.1 (1984): 40–124.
9
Levene, ‘Roman Historiography’, 280, 284. The idea of imperial historians being
either for or against the emperor can be perceived e.g. in Nicolai, ‘The Place of History’, 24.
For further discussion, see Ahl, ‘The Rider and the Horse’; L. Alfonsi, ‘Caratteristiche della
letteratura giulio-claudia’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.32.1 (1984): 3–39;
Thomas N. Habinek, The Politics of Latin literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient
Rome (1998).
Nevertheless, from the 1990s onwards the field of scholarship has once
again gradually changed; nowadays most scholars consider the simple ‘pro’ or
‘anti-Augustan’ dichotomy inadequate for understanding the multifaceted
relationship between politics and literature during the early Principate.10 As
Roller puts it, a more flexible idea of politics has been introduced to Roman
studies, and classicists nowadays prefer to examine a text not as something that
is only a response to political events, but as something that also constitutes

them.11 Instead of being natural allies or enemies, the emperor and the historian
nowadays are perceived as sharing the complicated political environment,
marked by uncertainties and possibilities.12 In past years the question of Livy’s
consciousness of his goals and purposes, in particular, has evoked a lively debate.
While differing opinions on this complex topic have been presented, Livy is now
usually seen as the conscious developer of historical writing in Rome.13
In order to examine the ideological overtones of Livy’s history and his
motives, as an author it is necessary to discuss briefly the personal background
of the historian. In the literary works that describe cultural decline, what usually
stands out are feelings of not belonging, of being an outsider in one’s own time.
This alienation can be clearly observed in the Ab urbe condita. Like so many
authors of his day, Livy was not originally from Rome – he was born in a small
town in Northern Italy around 60 BC and spent his adolescence in Patavium.14
Roller suggests that, considering Livy’s elite education and his apparent lack
of patronage in Rome, he belonged to the municipal aristocracy and came to
Rome to make his name.15 Presumably, therefore, Livy had personal experience
of feeling like an outsider in metropolitan Rome – as Farney points out, in the
Duncan F. Kennedy, ‘“Augustan” and “Anti-Augustan”: Reflections on Terms of

10
Reference’, in Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, ed. A. Powell (1992),
26–58, 35–48; C.J. Classen, ‘Clio exclusa’, in Clio and the Poets. Augustan Poetry and the
Traditions of Ancient Historiography, eds D.S. Levene and D.P. Nelis (2002), 1–24: 17.
K. Toll, ‘Making Roman-ness in the Aeneid’, Classical Antiquity 16.1 (1997): 34–56, 50.
11
Roller, ‘The Politics’, 154.
12
Ibid., 172.
13
For this debate, see e.g. Ronald Syme, ‘Livy and Augustus’, Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 64 (1959): 27–87; Patrick G. Walsh, Livy: Historical Aims and Methods (1961);
T.J. Luce, Livy, The Composition of his History (1977); Gary Miles, Livy: Reconstructing Early
Rome (1995); Mary Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome (1997); Andrew Feldherr, Spectacle and
Society in Livy’s History (1998); Jane D. Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History (2000).
14
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 100.
15
Roller, ‘The Politics’, 172. As Mehl states, municipal men were a social class that was
actively establishing its presence in the public life of Rome in the civil war period. Mehl,
Roman Historiography, 100.
late first century BC for municipal men to blend in with the old Roman families
in the public life of the capital still was not completely free of difficulties.16
Another factor that presumably affected the topic and the style of Livy’s work
was his background in Stoic philosophical studies. According to Seneca the
Elder, Livy wrote treatises on moral philosophy during his early career and only
later turned to history.17 In his historiographical work Livy seems to have put his
training in philosophy and Stoic ethics to good use. The idea of greed, ambition
and excessive ferocitas as generators of moral decline is omnipresent in his work
and reflects the Stoic ideals of moderation and self-restraint.18 In the moral
universe of the Ab urbe condita, selfless magnanimitas and calm consideration
are the attributes that characterize both a vir bonus and a balanced society.
As early as the 1960s Walsh gave attention to Livy’s philosophical background
and its impact on his use of exempla.19 Livy has an immense interest in the
influential individuals of Roman history.20 According to his idea of history,
remarkable individuals steer the course of events, and the person’s character,
determined by virtues and vicissitudes, is a key to the motives and actions. Livy’s
interest in the exemplary discourse is by no means exceptional; as Mehl points out,
the idea of history as an example characterizes Roman historical thinking from
its very beginning.21 This is something Roman historians inherited from their
Greek predecessors; Nicolai rightly states that the goal of ancient historiography
was never merely scientific, but it was closely connected to creating paradigms,
‘predominantly ethical or politico-militaristic ones’.22 Thus, the historian’s task
was to convey moral codes by depicting actions of the past.23 Chaplin notes that
this phenomenon is particularly typical of the authors of the triumviral and the
16
Gary D. Farney, Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic Competition in Republican Rome
(2007), 5–11. See also Cic. Leg. 2.5.
17
Sen. Contr. 10.2.
18
See e.g. Robert J. Penella, ‘Vires/Robus/Opes and Ferocia in Livy’s Account of
Romulus and Tullus Hostilius’, Classical Quarterly 40 (1990): 207–13; S.P. Oakley, ‘Dionysius
of Halicarnassus and Livy on the Horatii and the Curiatii’, in Ancient Historiography and its
Contexts. Studies in Honour of A.J. Woodman, eds Christina S. Kraus, John Marincola and
Christopher Pelling (2010), 118–38, 137; Joseph B. Solodov, ‘Livy and the Story of Horatius,
1.24–26’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 109 (1979): 251–68. Elina
Pyy, ‘The Horatii Legend and the Ambivalence of Youthful Heroism’, forthcoming 2015.
19
Walsh, Livy, 49–57.
20
21
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 20, 108, 198.
22
Nicolai, ‘The Place of History’, 14; see also Marincola, ‘Introduction’, 8.
23
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 20, 24, 198; Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History, 3,
11–16, 51–3; Matthew B. Roller, ‘Exemplarity in the Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius
Cocles and Cloelia’, Classical Philology 99 (2004), 1–56, 3–5.
early imperial period, due to the sense of continuity that exemplary stories offer
in an uncertain political environment.24
Even though virtues such as dignitas, gravitas, pietas and fides are what mark
the agents of the Roman past in the Ab urbe condita, it is important to notice
that Livy’s exemplary discourse is by no means limited to positive role models.
In the preface to his work he states explicitly that the benefits of reading history
come from encountering various kinds of examples.25 In the Ab urbe condita Livy
repeatedly focuses on the opponents of the Roman order – historical characters
who acted against the common good or the values of their time.
Moreover, Livy’s depiction of history revolves to a great extent around
ambivalent personages and situations. Walsh’s claim that Livy shaped the stories
of the past to give a coherent picture of people in them has been called into
question in more recent studies.26 Mehl for one argues that despite a certain
sense of ‘typecasting’ in Livy’s work, the author always treats his characters
as individuals whose behaviour is not uniform but highly dependent on the
situation.27 Pitcher too, uses the Ab urbe condita as an example of ancient
historiography that is marked by paradoxical characters, people capable of
change.28 Indeed, throughout the work one can observe the author’s interest in
moments of conflict and insecurity – one-dimensional heroes or heroines are
rare. In Livy’s work, historia docent, the lesson is not a simple one. Instead, the
past teaches people to bear uneasiness and make morally sustainable choices in
difficult situations. This is achieved by comparing the positive exempla with the
negative and the ambivalent.
Livy the Healer: Benefits of Knowing the Past
The role of the historian in this process becomes clear in the preface of the
Ab urbe condita. The work begins with a question concerning its legitimation.
The author asks if he should start writing a Roman history at all; he presents
himself as uncertain and lacking confidence for his task. Fittingly, Livy speaks
about the weakness of the Roman people but seems to be an example of this
weakness himself.
Chaplin, Livy’s Exemplary History, 169–71, 201–2.

24
Liv. Praef. 10.

25
26
Patrick G. Walsh, ‘Livy’s Preface and the distortion of History’, The American Journal
of Philology 76 (1955): 369–83.
27
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 106.
28
L.V. Pitcher, ‘Characterization in Ancient Historiography’, in Blackwell Companion
to Greek and Roman Historiography, ed. John Marincola (2007), 102–17, 106, 115–17. See
also Levene, ‘Roman Historiography’, 285.
Livy’s hesitation is exceptional in the Graeco-Roman historiographical

tradition; the great Greek forerunners of the field, Herodotus and Thucydides,
present themselves in a convincing manner, as authors who are conscious of the
importance of their work:29 Livy, instead, wavers. Moreover, he stresses that he is
not unique in his attempt to write a Roman history but indebted to many who
have studied the subject before him.30 His lack of self-aggrandisement can be
considered a deliberate rhetorical strategy. By showing insecurity before a great

challenge, he persuades his audience to look favourably on his task right from
the beginning.
Moreover, Livy evokes the sympathies of the audience by explaining how they
can benefit from his project in their own lives. He emphasizes that the purpose
of his history is not merely to preserve the memory of the past, but first and
foremost to answer to the needs of the Roman people. Livy assumes that most of
his readers would prefer to learn about recent history and would probably wish
to pass over the obscure remote past – but he does not allow them to do so.31 He
wants his audience to concentrate on the legendary past first, since it is the only
way to find solutions for the problems in the present. We can observe how the
author explains in a persuasive manner that only by studying history thoroughly
and profoundly can the cure for the sickness of the people be found – only this
way can the decay of the culture be cured.
What then, is this sickness from which Livy believes Rome is suffering? First
of all, it is important to note that the decline of the Roman culture was by no
means a new idea. As Harrison points out, the idealized picture of past golden
times and the idea of the moral corruption of the present formed a fundamental
part of Roman self-perception long before the Augustan period.32 In the Roman
literary tradition the beginning of the decline is usually dated to the second
century BC, when the whole Mediterranean fell into the hands of the Romans –
in particular, the phenomenon is associated with the end of the Punic wars, and
with the influx of Hellenistic culture from the East.33
29
Herod. Hist. 1 Praef; Thuc. Pelop. 1.1. On rhetoric in writing history, see A.J.
Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (1988), 128.
30
Praef. 1.2.
31
Liv. Praef. 5.
32
Stephen Harrison, ‘Decline and Nostalgia’, in Blackwell Companion to Latin
Literature, ed. idem. (2005), 287–99, 294.
33
Harrison, ‘Decline and Nostalgia’, 287. Different occasions for the beginning of
the moral decay are suggested in Roman literature; the most popular is the destruction of
Carthage in 146 BCE. Harrison, ‘Decline and Nostalgia’, 288; see Vell. Pat. 2.11; Florus
1.33.1.Livy once blames the booty brought from Asia in 187 BCE (Liv. 39.6.7). Mehl,
however, argues that Livy does not give a set date for the beginning of the decline, but
presents it as a gradually accelerating process. Mehl, Roman Historiography, 107. See also
Polyb. 31.25.3ff; Plin. NH 17.244.
The Roman literary tradition firmly connects the idea of a gradual decline
to the character of Cato the Elder, a famous statesman who lived 200 years
before Livy. In addition to his remarkable political career, Cato is known as the
pioneer of Latin prose and as the author of the first Latin history treatise known
to us, the Origines.34 According to Livy, Cato blamed the luxury and the wealth,
acquired through expansion to Greece and Asia, for the moral weakness of the
people.35 Most of Cato’s historical writing has not survived, other than some
fragments preserved by Cornelius Nepos,36 but it appears that his reputation
as an old-fashioned moralist was based on his own pen. Certainly his renown
had an immense impact on later Roman moral discourse – as Levene notes,
Cato’s attitude was a ‘congenial touchstone for someone deploring the absence
of morality in his own contemporaries’.37
The development of the idea of the modern decline can be particularly well
observed in the literary works of the late Republic and the early Principate,
stimulated by decades of civil war.38 Harrison shows how, despite their different
styles, the two great Republican poets, Catullus and Lucretius, both present
the Rome of their own time as a community without any moral direction,
characterized by ‘material wealth and mental poverty’.39 The same phenomenon
marks the historiography of the late Republic. Moral corruption is a dominant
theme in the work of Sallust, who blamed it on Rome’s world dominion and
prosperity.40 Thus, despite the different styles of Sallust and Livy, they both
explain Roman history in terms of decline caused by military conquests and the
influx of wealth.41
The long discourse concerning the decline of Roman virtues goes back
centuries in the Republican tradition – the Augustan authors, in turn, build
firmly on this foundation in their treatment of moral issues. In the legendary
past Livy finds a moral exemplum and a temporal resort; his own time is a
cause of distress, marked by the weakness of the body politic. To his mind, after
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 51–2. Cato wrote extensively beyond history; his
34
extinct works included letters, speeches and technical treatise. His most famous and well-
preserved work is De agri cultura, the oldest surviving piece of Latin prose. Mehl, Roman
Historiography, 51–2.
35
Liv. 34.2.1–2.
36
See Cornelius Nepos, 3.2–4.
37
Levene, ‘Roman Historiography’, 282.
38
Harrison, ‘Decline and Nostalgia’, 298–9, see also 287.
39
Ibid., 290; see Cat. 64. 397–408; Lucr. 3.1057–67.
40
41
Levene, ‘Roman Historiography’, 286. Livy defines avaritia and luxuria, caused by
prosperity, as the main vices of the Roman people. Praef. 11. See Harrison, ‘Decline and
Nostalgia’, 293; Feldherr, Spectacle and Society, 40–50. For some discussion of the Sallustian
influence on Livy, see Woodman, Rhetoric, 128–35; Levene, ‘Roman Historiography’, 183–6.
decades of gradual decline, the post-civil war period has finally reached the
dismal moment when nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus.42
Livy’s exact expression is vitia nostra, which seems to encapsulate the moral
and ideological weakness of the people. Remedium, for its part, might indicate
the moral laws launched by Octavian in AD 28.43 It is important to notice that
in the early Principate there existed an idea that Augustus had attempted to
‘heal’ the broken society by means of autocracy; Tacitus, for instance, states in
the beginning of his Annales that non aliud discordantis patriae remedium quam
ut ab uno regeretur.44 Syme suggests that in the preface Livy might be using
remedium to refer to the efforts of Augustus to empower the central government
and restore concordia through legislation.45 This interpretation seems plausible,
considering Livy’s comment that the medicine might be too strong for the
weakened people – he seems to imply that the use of force and a strict legislation
might not be the best way to heal the injured body politic.
Instead of strict political procedures, Livy believes that the remedies can be
found in the study of history from a moral perspective – as he states, Hoc illud est
praecipue in cognitione rerum salubre ac frugiferum, omnis te exempli documenta
in illustri posita monumento intueri.46 Hence for Livy, history is a set of moral
lessons. The author promises to show the factors that were behind the growth
and the strength of the Roman Empire and those that led to its decline – in this
manner he believes that it is possible to disrupt the degenerative development
in society. Behind Livy’s modest façade there is a self-confident historian
who believes in the value and the significance of his work in the healing of
infirmitas Romana.
Livy the Arbiter: Concordia and Flexibility as Remedies for Infirmitas
How, then, does Livy pursue his task of curing the collective infirmitas? To
understand the methods of his history therapy it is necessary to examine little
more closely how the author uses the term remedium, and in what kinds of
42
‘[…] we can endure neither our vices nor their cure’. Liv. Praef. 9. English translation
of the Ab urbe condita, books 1–2 by B.O. Foster, LCL 1967, and books 31–4 by E.T. Sage,
LCL 1961.
43
Ronald Syme, ‘Livio e Augusto’, in Tito Livio, Storia di Roma dalla sua Fondazione
(libri I–II) (1988), 5–85: 29. See Prop. Eleg. 2.7.1
44
‘[…] the sole remedy for his distracted country was government by one man’. Tac.
Ann. 1.9.4.
45
Syme, ‘Livio e Augusto’, 30.
46
‘What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you
behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous monument […]’
Liv. Praef. 10.
contexts it appears. The basic meaning of the term is ‘medicine’ or ‘remedy’. In

a more abstract, all-encompassing meaning, it could be associated with social
or political solutions to difficult situations. Remedium is not among the most
frequently used terms in the Ab urbe condita – in fact, there are only 17 passages
where it can be found. In only two of these is the term used in its primary sense,
to signify an actual medicine for a physical sickness.47 Twice it is connected to a
situation in which there is a grave external threat to the state, and in four cases
it is used when the author discusses various problems that the Romans had with
other peoples.48 For the purposes of this chapter, the cases where remedium
appears in the context of domestic politics are of greatest interest. These in
effect form the major part of the remedium cases in the Ab urbe condita: in nine
instances the term is connected with an internal crisis of society.49
These internal crises are usually depicted as resulting from a conflict between
the common people and the political elite. Livy’s Roman history is haunted by
the memory of the Struggle of the Orders, the conflict between the patricians
and the plebeians that began in the early fifth century BC and lasted for two
centuries, permanently changing Roman political institutions. The historical
result of the struggle was the formation of the new civic society in which
plebeians gained civil rights and the united body of the populus Romanus was
formed. The historical memory of this crisis can be considered the core of Livy’s
historical narrative. It is a major theme in the books that describe the early
Republic in which social conflict is shown as the essential motivation behind
many political events.50
In these books the Struggle of the Orders appears as a long-term malaise that
weakens the society – a sort of sickness of the body politic and certainly a form
of infirmitas. Livy recounts numerous stories of arbitrary consuls and generals
who propose severe punishments as remedies for the social discontent. Often
the leading patricians try to prevent the reform policy of the plebeian tribunes
by force. Moreover, the common people are repeatedly suppressed by dictators
and their strict laws. However, it is crucial to note that the efforts to ‘cure’ the
rebellious people by means of severe discipline are doomed to fail. Plebeians
refuse to obey the unlawful measures. Even the attempts of the Senate to bribe
the leaders of the people end in failure when the plebeians rebel against the
patrician government. Livy seems to imply that this kind of medicine for the
sick people is simply ineffective; the use of force and intimidation does not work
well with Romans.51
47
Liv. 10.47.7, 45.28.3.
48
Liv. 2.25.4; 3.3.5; 9.20.5; 34.49.3; 39.50.5; 42.40.4.
49
Liv. 2.23.15; 2.43.10; 3.20.8; 5.52.10; 6.35.6; 22.8.5; 26.3.4; 34.4.8.
50
51
See e.g. Liv. 2.43.10; 3.20.8; 6.35.6.
Instead, as an effective method to solve the crises caused by social injustice,

Livy promotes peaceful settlement and the forethought of the leaders. This is
aptly manifested in a story dating to 495 BC. In book two Livy tells a story
about an old soldier who, after retiring from military service, fell deeply in debt.
During the Sabine war the enemy had destroyed his fields, which led to his
miserable situation. Due to his inability to pay his debts, the man was deprived
of all that remained of his possessions and sentenced to scourging in public.

The incident caused great unrest among the people and led to a grave political
crisis.52 In a manner typical of him, Livy introduces two political actors with
completely different approaches – in this case, the consuls, the arrogant Appius
Claudius and the tolerant Publius Servilius. After the quarrel of the plebeians
and a threat of war with the Volsci, Publius Servilius, friend of the common
people, talks to them, promising reforms. In the end, the effective remedy in this
difficult situation is a new law that prohibits the enslavement of a free citizen
and protects the rights of soldiers and their families. Thus Livy implies that
moderation and temperance are to be considered efficient medicines for the
sickness of the people. Infirmitas cannot be overcome by excessive use of force
and oppression.
In addition to the episodes that deal with social injustice, Livy uses remedium
as a moral concept in other sorts of crises. A good example is the story of
Marcus Furius Camillus, one of the founding fathers of the state.53 In book five
Livy narrates how, after the invasion of the Gauls in 387 BC, most of Rome
is destroyed. As a result, the Senate discusses the possibility of building a new
city elsewhere. Camillus, however, refuses to abandon the city and defends the
original site by appealing to its religious and moral value.54 On this occasion
Livy uses the term remedium when depicting a moment of absolute weakness
brought about by horrors of war.55 Through the exemplum of Camillus the
author reminds his readers that the proper medicine for the weakened state is
the ancient religion and the maintenance of the old rituals. Only through these
can the Romans placate the gods and win their favour, and hence become a great
people. In this episode one can perceive echoes of the chaotic situation of the
post-civil war period. It seems that through the example of Camillus, the author
offers a model for his contemporary Romans who, in a sense, find themselves
among the ruins of society, in a situation comparable to the sack of Rome in the
fourth century.
Liv. 2.23.1–14.
52
Of the figure of Camillus in Roman history, see e.g. Feldherr, Spectacle and Society,
53
78–81.
54
Liv. 5.49.8–55.5. For further discussion, see Feldherr, Spectacle and Society, 79–81.
55
Liv. 5.52.10.
In the stories discussed above, Livy uses the term remedium, on the one hand,
in the context of social justice, and, on the other, when he describes the building
of the patria. These stories by and large are dominated by the male perspective
and by heroic, political masculinity. Nevertheless, Livy seems to be equally
interested in Roman women as a part of the people. Issues concerning a proper
gender order are repeatedly raised in the Ab urbe condita; most often they are
connected to moments of weakness, when an external threat forces the Romans

to reconsider their ultimate values.
In Livy’s work the single most important incident concerning the development
of the Roman gender dynamics is the case of Lex Oppia, dating to the period of
the second Punic war. Lex Oppia, decreed in 215 BC, was a law that restricted
the right of elite women to move from one place to another in public, as well as
to own and display valuable ornaments. The dispute over the annulment of the
law in 195 BC is vividly depicted in the Ab urbe condita.56 A central character
in the debate is Cato the Elder; Cato appears as a misogynistic moralist and
a champion of the old Roman order who strongly opposes the visibility of
matrons in public. In Cato’s speech Livy introduces the well-known rhetorical
motive of Rome as a sick nation.57 The author returns to the ideas discussed in
the preface of his work – for instance, that the sickness should be profoundly
analysed before choosing the medicine.58 Cato speaks of the conquest of the
Orient and the luxuries brought by it, stating that eo plus horreo, ne illae magis
res nos ceperint quam nos illas59 and claiming that patrum nostrorum memoria per
legatum Cineam Pyrrhus non uirorum modo sed etiam mulierum animos donis
temptauit.60 According to Cato, Roman women are eager to give way to the
temptations of luxury and prone to be misled and bribed. The decay of Rome,
therefore, is visible in the habits and the dresses of elite ladies.
However, even if Cato’s arguments are well rehearsed, his opponents are
stronger. The plebeian tribune Lucius Valerius stresses that Roman men are not
eager to be commanders or lords in their families, but prefer to be fathers and
spouses.61 Here, Livy implies that, like the social order, the Roman gender order
should not be based on force and oppression but on the pursuit of concordia.
Cato’s remedies are exaggerated and inefficient. Restricting the freedom of
women would not heal the disintegration of the Roman people or give them
the strength to endure the intolerable political situation, but negotiation and
Liv. 34.1–8.
56
For Cato’s speech in total, see Liv. 34.2–4.

57
58
Liv. 34.4.8; Sicut ante morbos necesse est cognitos esse quam remedia eorum (‘As it is
necessary that diseases be known before their cures’).
59
‘[…] the more I fear that these things will capture us rather than we them’. Liv. 34.4.3.
60
‘In the memory of our forefathers Pyrrhus, through his agent Cineas, tried to corrupt
with gifts the minds of our men and women as well’. Liv. 34.4.6.
61
Liv. 34.7.13–15; for the speech in total, see 34.5–7.
settlement will do so. After the annulment of the Lex Oppia, the Roman people,
men and women, are depicted as protecting their patria as a united front. In a
similar manner to that of his accounts of social injustice, Livy promotes concordia
and flexibility when it comes to gender conflicts. He implies that the best way
to prevent subversive behaviour that might weaken the people – especially when
there is an external threat to the state – is to take care of the needs of the different
segments of society, from the common people to the elite matrons.
Livy the Augustan? Reform and Restoration in the Ab urbe condita
As mentioned earlier, Livy’s efforts to unite the people and to treat the trauma
caused by the civil war has aroused an intense debate concerning his position
in regard to the Augustan policies.62 Livy began his massive work on Roman
history in c. 29 BC – just two years after Octavian had seized the central power.
He wrote all his life and died three years after Augustus, in AD 17.63 Thus, the
Ab urbe condita can be considered a pure-blooded product of the Augustan era,
characteristic of this period in its glorification of the distant past and its anxiety
about the future.64 Some scholars have gone so far as to consider Livy one of the
main architects of a new imperial ideology that legitimized the position of the
emperor in the new political order – Levene for one, strongly associates his work
with Augustus’ efforts for political restoration and religious revival.65
What should not go unnoticed however is the long period of time that Livy
took to work on his magnum opus and the question of how this influenced the
ideological content of his work. Farrell, in his study of Augustan literature,
notably points out that the 40 years of Augustus’ rule can hardly be treated as
a uniform whole.66 Rather, because of its fragile role in the creation of a new
political culture, this period is more likely to be marked by continuous change,
from the insecurities of the post-civil war phase to the firmly established
autocracy. Livy finished the first volume of the Ab urbe condita during the 20s
BC, and the preface might even predate the victory at Actium in 31 BC.67 Thus,
as Mehl points out, the nostra aetas that Livy blames for decay in the preface
can hardly refer to the second decade AD when he concluded the work.
Roller, ‘The Politics’, 155. See also Syme, ‘Livio e Augusto’; H. Petersen, ‘Livy and
62
Augustus’, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91 (1961):

440–52.
63
Farrell, ‘The Augustan Period’, 45; Mehl, Roman Historiography, 100.
64
65
66
Farrell, ‘The Augustan Period’.
67
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 100, 120; Harrison, ‘Decline and Nostalgia’, 292;
The beginning of the Ab urbe condita conveys the feelings of Livy in the time
close to the civil wars, and it is most likely that his thoughts and views altered in
the course of years.68
No part of the Ab urbe condita that is likely to have been written after 15 BC
survives, so it is impossible to make definite claims on the subject – however, as
Mehl argues, it seems very improbable that Livy would have written in a similar
tone in the latter part of the Augustan period when society had been stabilized
and the political atmosphere had changed from civil war to an established
autocracy.69 Therefore, rather than study Livy as a characteristically Augustan
historian, it might be better to examine him primarily as a post-civil war
historian. After all, everything that is left of his work both predates the heyday
of Augustus’ reign and strongly reflects the ethos of the civil war period. The
‘delicate balance between anxiety and hope’ that Farrell considers characteristic
of Roman literature written in the aftermath of Actium is eminently present in
the first volumes of the Ab urbe condita, just as it is in the poetry of Virgil and
Horace, for instance.70
The idea that Livy was deeply committed to the Augustan politics might
be further questioned on the grounds that, despite his prominent position in
imperial circles, he was never an active agent in the political field. As far as we
know, he never took part in the political life nor held a public office.71 Moreover,
it has been implied that ideologically his sympathies lay elsewhere; according to
Tacitus, Livy was a firm supporter of Republican values, and Augustus himself
called him a Pompeian.72 However, even if Livy clearly did not commit himself
to all of Octavian/Augustus’ politics, when it comes to the hopes of healing
the body politic that had been weakened by the civil wars, the interests of the
historian and the emperor seem to have coincided. For Augustus’ politics the
Roman historical tradition and the Republican political heritage were of central
importance. His actions as emperor indicate the conscious use of Roman history
as a medium in his politics; his reign is characterized by an effort to construct
a new regime and to justify it ideologically by shaping a canonized version of
the Roman past. These goals indisputably bear a striking resemblance to those
of Livy, who repeatedly emphasizes the value of history in the reconstruction,
restoration and moral healing of the Roman people.
Mehl, Roman Historiography, 106–7; see Praef. 5.

68
Farrell, ‘The Augustan Period’, 53; Mehl, Roman Historiography, 107.

69
70
Farrell, ‘The Augustan Period’, 48.
71
Levene, ‘Roman Historiography’, 286, Mehl, Roman Historiography, 100. Moreover,
as Roller states, Livy was presumably among the first Roman historians who were not from a
senatorial family. Roller, ‘The Politics’, 172. See also Nicolai, ‘The Place of History’, 24.
72
Tac. Ann. 4.34.3; see Mehl, Roman Historiography, 193.
Conclusion
Livy begins his depiction of the Roman history by pointing out the darkness and
the despair of his own time. According to him, the civil war, Roman imperialism,
the influx of wealth and the populist politics of the late Republic have driven
the Romans into a state in which they can endure neither their sickness nor
its cure. Nevertheless, under this pessimistic tone, there lies a note of hope of
recovery – a hope that can be found in the study of the past. This chapter has
shown how Livy’s history therapy revolves around social justice, the importance
of Roman religious heritage and the proper Roman gender order. According to
Livy, these are the keys to the durable strength of the Roman people, whereas
medicines that are used to gain popularity at the present moment are doomed to
fail. The author reminds his audience – perhaps even the princeps himself – that
while radical remedies are sometimes needed when the state is in danger, they
should be used with caution, to avoid straining the weakened body of Rome.73
Furthermore, strong emotions or extremist elements of the populace should not
be allowed to decide which remedies are used.74 Infirmitas Romana cannot be
fought with force and oppression, but with concordia and justice.
Intriguingly, these elements can also be considered the main themes of the
Augustan politics – the establishment of concordia and order after the disastrous
civil wars, the reconstruction of Roman identity by means of religion and the
stabilizing of the social dynamics and the gender dynamics of society. The Ab
urbe condita powerfully reflects the ethos of the post-civil war period, openly
expressing the fear and the uncertainty of the future, but also presenting a glimpse
of hope in the middle of despair. Fragility and uncertainty, on the one hand, and
solution-oriented practicality, on the other, make Livy an ideal representative
of the intelligentsia of his time. He gets a grip on his readers by promising that
there is a way out of the infirmitas that they are going through. Furthermore,
when it comes to treating the trauma of the people, he very discreetly implies
that the historian might be a better doctor than the politician.
73
See e.g. Liv. 2.43.10; 3.20.8; 22.8.5.
74
See e.g. Liv. 2.23.15; 2.43.10; 3.20.8; 26.3.4.

PART III
Infirmity, Healing and Community

Chapter 10
From Mithridatium to Potio Sancti Pauli:
The Idea of a Medicine from Antiquity to
the Middle Ages
Svetlana Hautala
Introduction
Drugs can be considered a certain incarnation of the illness itself: the drug may
become equal, in a metaphoric sense, to the illness against which it is prescribed,
and instead of naming the infirmity we can use the name of the remedy. For
example, we can say ‘Aspirin’ or ‘antibiotic’ and it is clear we are talking of fever
or inflammation; or we can say ‘Prozac’, ‘Viagra’ and so on. The proverbial use
of hellebore was well known for naming madness in ancient times: one could
be declared as mad, or that they needed hellebore – the message was the same.1
This chapter tends to approach the multifaceted concept of infirmitas in
history by looking at how the definition of a medicine was built and developed
in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. I will start by delineating the cognitive
and semantic field of the notion of pharmakon – the word that, as is known,
signified both remedy and poison in Antiquity. The risks and dangers contained
in medicaments meant a special role was assigned to those involved in the
preparation and selling of drugs. Society, I will argue, naturalizes the concept of
‘wild’ in the figure of the remedy seller. The chapter concludes with a reflection
on the transmission of pharmaceutical knowledge from Antiquity to the
Middle Ages.
The ‘Total Drug Effect’
In evaluating the effectiveness of medicines, science has had – we could say

has always had – some difficulty in distinguishing any culturally constructed
component from the physiological effect. While biopharmacologists insist that the
1
Cf. Pith’ helleboron (Drink hellebore!) in Aristophanes, V., 1489, cf. Demosthenes,
18. 121.
curative strength of medicines consists in their substance and that is why they are
a blessing – as they give man the chance to find therapy without the need to resort
to others – anthropologists, who study the role of medication in various cultures,
see their effectiveness as a cultural construct with both a biological and social
dimension.2 The nature of effectiveness of the medication cannot be limited to its
chemical contents. Effectiveness shows itself in the context of trust and expectations,
through social communication and interaction. The therapeutic effect begins

with preparation – the collection of ingredients, the composition, prescription
and purchase of the remedy. The ‘total drug effect’3 also depends on the non-
chemical attributes of the medicine, such as the colour, name and origin or on the
characteristics of the person prescribing it and to whom it is prescribed, or even on
the situation in which the medicine is administered and taken.4 For example, many
cultures hold the belief that remedies from other countries are more effective than
local ones.5 Constructed according to principles that differ slightly but which belong
to the same order are the modern beliefs that medicines coming from Switzerland
or Japan metonymically benefit from the prestige of the advanced technology that
these countries boast. Though the composition of aspirin, for example, should be
the same in Romania or in Switzerland, Swiss aspirin is preferred.6 Furthermore, we
can see a contrary belief. When we are abroad, we often prefer medicine from our
own country: familiar and therefore considered safer. For example, immigrant Thai
workers write home asking their families to send medicines, despite the fact that
many medicines are accessible in the country in which they work.7 And things were
not much different, as we will see now, in ancient times.
In fact, some private letters have been found in Egypt in which the writer
expresses the same desire to receive medicines from home. For example, in the
three ostraca coming from Mons Claudianus and dating back to the second
century, the first letter is written by a Menelaus asking another Menelaus to send
Nina L. Etkin, ‘Cultural constructions of efficacy’, (1988), 299–326, Michael L. Tan,

2
‘The meaning of medicines: examples from the Philippines’, in Medicines: Meanings and
Context, eds Michael L. Tan and Nina L. Etkin (1994), 6–81.
3
Cecil G. Helman, Culture, Health and Illness: An Introduction for Health Professionals
(1984), 106; Gordon Claridge, Drugs and Human Behaviour (1970).
4
Sjaak van der Geest, Susan Reynolds Whyte and Anita Hardon, ‘The Anthropology of
Pharmaceuticals: A Biographical Approach’, Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 167–8.
5
Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937),
Maria Lepowsky, ‘Sorcery and penicillin: Treating illness on a Papua New Guinea island’,
Social Science & Medicine, 30.10 (1990): 1049–63, Kodjo A. Senah, ‘“Blofo Tshofa”: local
perceptions of medicines in a Ghanaian coastal community’, in Medicines: Meanings and
Context, eds Michael L. Tan and Nina L. Etkin (1994), 83–101.
6
Sjaak van der Geest and Susan Reynolds Whyte, ‘The Charm of Medicines:
Metaphors and Metonyms’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 3.4 (1989): 360.
7
Van der Geest et al., ‘The Anthropology’, 168.
From Mithridatium to Potio Sancti Pauli 173
him a small oil-flask (lēkuthos) of rose oil, as he cannot procure it where he is; in
the second, Isidore asks his two sons to send him two collyriums and a cushion
for his elbow (hypankōnion) to calm the pain that is disturbing his sleep; in the
third, Psenpaapis asks his brother to go to the doctor for some saffron, as he still
had not received the ‘medicinal collyriums’.8
And yet, Egyptian medicines were considered among the best, thanks to
the reputation of Egypt, which as early as Homer’s times was characterized

as a region ‘producing numerous medicines’ and where ‘everyone is an expert
doctor above and beyond other men all: they are the race of Paeon’ (Od., 4,
227–32). A similar place was Crete, where they believed many medicinal herbs
grew in abundance. According to Galen, even being born in Crete was of great
advantage to a pharmacologist.9
As well as the horizontal movement – from the borders to the centre, the
areas rich in medicinal substances can mostly be found at the very edges of the
Greek world – there was also a vertical division, according to which the most
effective herbs grew on the tops of mountains. For example, Theophrastus states
that ‘in Greece, the places where medicinal plants grow most abundantly are
Pelion in Thessaly, Telethrion in Euboea and Parnassus’.10
Also contributing to the ‘total drug effect’ are the colour, appearance and
active characteristics of the medicinal substance (be it of vegetable, animal or
non-organic origin): it is a complex of ideas christened the ‘theory of signatures’
by Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493–1541), but
which without a doubt is rooted in ancient times and in some ways still persists
today.11 For example, the celandine (Chelidonium majus L.), thanks to its yellow-
orange milk (‘saffron colour’, according to Dioscorides), was used in treating
jaundice.12 The plant thēlyphonon, ‘which many refer to as scorpion as its root
looks like a scorpion13 […] when drunk helps against scorpion stings’.14
8
For all the indications of origin and the bibliography see Marie-Hélène Marganne,
‘Étiquettes de médicamentes, listes de drogues, prescriptions et réceptaires dans l’Égypte
gréco-romaine et byzantine’, in Pharmacopoles et apothicaires. Les ‘pharmaciens’ de l’Antiquité
au Grand Siècle, eds Franck Collard and Évelyne Samama (2006), 59–73.
9
Gal., De theriaca ad Pisonem, 1 (K XIV, 211).
10
Theophr., HP IX 15, 4.
11
Gerard J. van den Broeck, ‘Signs and signatures: Reading God’s Herbal’, Semiotica, 63
(1987): 109–28, Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines
(1966), 41. For the theory of signatures in antiquity, see Suzanne Amigues, ‘La segnature
des plantes, source de croyance ou de savoir dans l’Antiquité gréco-romain?’ in Études de
botanique antique, ed. Suzanne Amiques (2002), 149–60.
12
Diosc., II 180; Gal., De simpl. med. temp. ac fac., 8, 9 (K XII 156).
13
Dioscorides is more precisely (IV 76): ‘a root similar to the tail of a scorpion, shiny as
alabaster’.
14
Theophr., HP IX, 18, 2.
In the information of this kind, it is not merely superstition or magic, after all
the cholagogic effect of celandine has now been scientifically proven:15 establishing
relationships between a plant’s appearance and its curative values is more a way of
organizing knowledge. We are dealing with a ‘practical logic’,16 which scorns no
aspect in the organization of the data and in maintaining that order. As a South
American ethnobotanist remembers: ‘Carmela Romero (sc. a curandera) used to
give me the leaves of plants and say: Rub it, feel it until you learn its significance.
In her opinion, for example, the thick leaves of the medicinal boldo show how the
infusion made with them strengthens the walls of the stomach’.17
In general, it should be noted that the concept of pharmakon suggests
mainly the manufacture, whatever that may be; the curative strength is extracted
in some way – by squeezing the juice, mixing and/or cooking, perhaps saying
magic words – in any case, the remedy must be prepared. The rhizotomoi (root
cutters) sometimes gathered their material using rituals, prayers and magic
spells;18 but where a doctor prescribes a remedy, the effectiveness of it may be
increased by the ‘ritual’ of the consultation and consequent therapy and equally
by the doctor’s explanation on why the cure would be effective.19
Pharmakon: a Vox Media
According to the definition given in the Corpus Hippocraticum, ‘all substances

that change the state of the patient are medicines’.20 In Homer, this vox media21
is often accompanied by attributes that clearly state its meaning. Mōly, the
marvellous plant that Hermes takes to Odysseus on the road to the Circe palace
and which should act as an antidote, is the pharmakon esthlon (effective, good:
Gabriel Garnier, et al, Ressources médicinales de la flore française (1961), 483–5, Paul
15
Schauenberg and Ferdinand Paris, Guide des plantes médicinales (1974), 28.
16
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1966), 9.
17
Juan Carlos C. Gumucio, Hierarchy, Utility and Metaphor in Mapuche Botany
(1999), 131.
18
See the examples in Guy Ducourthial, Flore magique et astrologique de l’Anitiquité
(2003), 139–80.
19
Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman. Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (1998),
122.
20
Hippocrates, Places in Man, ed. and trans. Elizabeth M. Craik (1998), 82. Isabella
Capitani, ‘Sulle molteplici valenze di pharmacon a partire dai dialoghi platonici e dai testi
ippocratici’, in Testi medici latini antichi. Le parole della medicina: lessico e storia, eds Sergio
Sconocchia and Fabio Cavalli (2004), 665–82.
21
Or rather, a word that has no actual positive or negative meaning, but can be
determined in one sense or another according to the adjective accompanying it and to the
context.
Od., 10, 287). When Circe restores Odysseus’ companions to human form,
she uses a pharmakon allo (another), contrary to the pharmakon oulomenon
(accursed) with which she transformed them into pigs (Od., 10, 392–4). Circe’s
home is called polypharmakos (of many drugs or charms: Od., 10, 276), and her
magic philtres pharmaka lygra (mournful: Od., 10, 236).
When Empedocles (31 B 23 DK) describes the birth of all that which lives
from mixing the elements produced by Love, he refers to the comparison with
painters who mix pigments of various colours – the polykhroa pharmaka – ‘in
harmony – more of some ingredients and less of others – with these colours
they form figures similar to everything’. In this way, painters and medicine
preparers are united by the mortar – both use it to grind substances, to crumble
and mix them, creating new combinations; colours to paint the images of the
existing (images in the sense of eidōla – those which look like the prototypes),
or medicines, which seem to be poisons when in fact they are remedies and,
vice versa, which may appear to be love potions and in fact turn out to be
poisons; the same medicine-coloured dyes that may be poisons and philtres. The
activity of the dyers (who in Latin were called violarii, infectarii) gave material
to the ancient moralists: dying wool meant changing (violating) its nature,
manipulating its true colours.22
But multi-coloured fabrics, as they are contrary to the godly, virtuous and
austere life, can be found in everything to do with affairs of the heart: coloured
clothes are seductive. Even the invention of purple dye is attributed to affairs of
the heart: the dog of Heracles who was courting the nymph Tyros, tried to eat
a shell and doing so, dyed the hairs around his mouth. The nymph liked this
purple colour so much that she asked Heracles for a dress of an equally splendid
colour.23 And so, purple dye was invented – by accident, from admiration,
from the fervent desire to possess a coloured dress and from Heracles’ success
in seduction.
In this way, we have entered the field of Aphrodite/Venus: pharmakon as well
as remedy, poison or dye also meant love potion. The Greek pharmattein ta eria
(dyeing wool) corresponds to the Latin venerare laenas. And the Latin uenenum
shares with pharmakon the complexity of a vox media: ‘uenenum et de bono et de
malo dicitur’ (uenenum is said of good and of bad) Servius explains.24 And the
22
Regarding the disapproval of dying fabrics: Plut., Qaest. Rom., 26, cf. also Herodotus,
III 22, 1, Clem. Alex., Stromat., I X 48, 5. We note here also a contrary movement: by refusing
the trade of the dyer we can take a step on the road towards saintliness: cfr., e.g., the story of
the Veiled Prophet of ‘El tintorero enmascarado Hakim de Merv’ by Jorge Luis Borges. Let
us remember that Saint Catherine of Siena, doctor of the Church, was also the daughter of a
wool dyer.
23
Pollux Onomast., I 45; Nonn., Dionys., XL 315–19, Ach. Tat., Leuc. et Clit., 2. 11.
4–8.
24
Serv., ad A., XI, 458, cf. Serv., ad G., I 129.
jurists, whenever they used the word, were asked to add whether it was beneficial
or damaging.25 As is known, before becoming the proper name of the divinity,
uenus (grammatically neutral) in Latin designated the impersonal concept of
certain powers used by mortals in their spells. Subsequently, this idea became
the female goddess Venus whose image preserved all the nuances of the pristine
notion of ‘uenus – nature’s charm’ and ‘uenus – women’s charm’.26 Love potions,
remedies and poisons – all called uenenum, or rather deriving from uenus – also
represent a side of the ‘charm’, or the ‘spell’.27
Dye, medicine and love potion make up a complex mix in the myth of Deianira
as well. To win back Heracles’ heart, Deianira (literally ‘man-killer’) offers him
a garment soaked in the blood of the centaur Nessus, killed by Heracles with a
poisoned arrow. Before dying, Nessus, to take his revenge on Heracles, convinces
Deianira that his blood would become a powerful love potion, but in reality, her
terrible garment kills Heracles.28
Substance without Essence
In our attempt to understand how poison and remedy can coexist under the
same name, we could view the problem from the angle of temporal relativism.
The declaration that some substances or foodstuffs are poisonous is a fairly
recent phenomenon, a characteristic of our times. De Ville wrote in 1689
that, for example, the apricot, today considered healthy, ‘easily corrupts in the
stomach and causes diarrhoea’, and the innocent cucumber ‘even in the best of
stomachs … causes malignant and obstinate fever’.29 Explaining why the viper, a
Digesta, 50, 16, 236.

25
Robert Schilling, La religion romaine de Vénus depuis des origines jusqu’au temps
26
d’Auguste (1954), 60–61.

27
Maurizio Bettini, ‘Venus venusta. Il corpo femminile fra piacere, filtri amorosi e voglia
di perdonare’, in Il corpo a pezzi, eds Gianna Petrone and Salvatore D’Onofrio (2004), 79–94.
28
See Heinrich von Staden, ‘The mind and skin of Hercales: heroic diseases’ (1992).
29
Jean-Baptiste De Ville, Histoire des plantes de l’Europe et des plus usitées qui
viennent d’Asie, d’Afrique & d’Amerique (1689), 776, 587. The explicative mechanism of said
confirmations dates back to Galen. As is known, this physician had elaborated a system in
which each medicine, foodstuff or mineral substance attributed the quality that could show
themselves gradually: the first level represented the minimum intensity of heat, cold and
so on, the fourth consecutively corresponded with the maximum intensity. In this system
poisonous plants (such as hemlock, poppy, henbane, thorn-apple and so on) are fourth level
cold. So the ‘cold’ part is more dangerous: for example, mushrooms are always perceived
as cold, and for this reason poisonous. But salads are also cold: wild lettuce, according to
Galen, is third level cold while the cultivable one is first level cold. John Riddle, Dioscorides
on Pharmacy and Medicine (1985), 171–2.
poisonous creature, is used in preparing the antidote, Galen thought to recount

an opportune example regarding the plant known as helenion:
This is said to have been handed down regarding helenion, so called by the
Greeks and nico or nino by the natives. In fact, they say that the Dacians and the
Dalmatians covered the tips of their arrows with helenion, because when this
came into contact with the blood of the wounded, it could kill them. The same
substance when eaten is safe and harmless; in fact, deer hit by the same arrows, did
not harm those who ate [the meat].30
And so we see once more how a medicinal plant (or rather pharmakon) contains
contrasting properties – the same herb heals wounds, but arrows dipped
in its juice mortally wound deer, though the meat of the deer killed in this
way can be eaten safely. It is a very refined system, where the poison is not a
substance categorically defined once and for all, a system that lacks in our binary
classification of edible/poisonous. According to Derrida, ‘[i]f the pharmakon
is “ambivalent”, it is because it constitutes the medium in which opposites are
opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves, reverses
them and makes one side cross over into another (…). The pharmakon is the
movement, the locus and the play, (the production of ) difference’.31
Our categorical imperative of placing some plants and substances in the
category of poisons characterizes urban living: in the countryside, poisonous
plants are manipulated to the point of becoming edible. For example, in Europe,
from ancient times until recently, we used to eat acorns that contain protein and
many other useful elements; but they also contain tannins, which make them
bitter and in high doses can also be poisonous.32
The change in state of a product from poisonous to edible presupposes a
matrix of detoxification procedures similar to those used in tropical societies
to convert numerous plants that are inedible or slightly poisonous when
raw – as for example, manioc – into food. These methods are often very
simple – soaking, boiling, roasting – but often there is the need for more complex
operations – immersion in running water, fermentation, grating and washing the
pulp to obtain starch. The latter is often used to make acorns edible.33 Galen, as
always very attentive to the details of life of the various levels of society, writing
of the properties of asphodel, observes: ‘I myself know that in times of hunger
30
Gal., De theriaca ad Pisonem, 10 (K XIV 244–5).
31
Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (1981), 127.
32
Pierre Lieutaghi, ‘Le végétal: pratique d’un monde périlleux’, Ethnologie française 34.
3 (2004): 399–401, Sarah L.R. Mason, ‘Acurnotopia? Determining the role of acorns in past
human subsistence’, in Food in Antiquity, eds John Wilkins, David Harvey and Mike Dobson
(1995), 12–24.
33
Lieutaghi, ‘Le végétal’, 401.
many rustics (agroikos) worked hard to make it edible through much boiling
and soaking in sweet water. Certainly the root has virtues, similar to edder-wort,
of thinning and freeing of obstructions. This is why some give the shoots as a
superb remedy for jaundice’.34
In ancient imagery, asphodel was known as the plant of the afterlife: it seems
that it was the only plant to cover the ground (asphodelos leimōn: the mead of
asphodel), found in Hades, where there was a lack of plants.35 But neither the
nature of the infernal plant attributed to asphodel, nor the evidently bitter
flavour of its root (or its presumed danger) stopped Galen’s rustics from trying
to make it edible in times of hunger.
An important trait comes from this activity: the possible presence of
dangerous substances in foods has always been a source of education. The
physiological effects teach people the medicinal faculties through induction.
For example, recognizing a bitter and astringent principle in acorns is followed
by the recognition of the principle of astringency, which in turn evokes the idea
of moderating pathological fluxes and scarring. With the same logic in mind,
asphodel is an excellent remedy for jaundice, as Galen observes.
The Figures of Natural Knowledge
Knowing how to behave during the gathering of medicinal plants successfully

means not only avoiding the dangers that threaten anyone who goes into the
woods, but also (and above all) conquering wild areas and controlling their
resources. Furthermore, the act of domesticating nature makes those who
do it a personification of this process and, at the same time, a social figure of
knowledge.36 The pharmakopōlēs (gr. lit. ‘medicine seller’) – the antecedent of
today’s chemist – emerges from the woods and comes directly into the very
centre of social life, in the agora, where he plays a crucial role in questions of
life and death: anyone can procure these remedies or poisons, depending on the
circumstances, for a reasonable price. Society, turning to his help in different
ways, naturalizes and familiarizes the wild component of Nature in the figure
of the remedy seller. The pharmakopōlēs constitutes and establishes a form
of intermediation.
When drugs are sold on the agora, often, to encourage sales, poisonous snakes
or dangerous insects are exhibited. At the same time, the circulation of rich
Gal., De alimentorum facultatibus, 2, 63 (K VI 652).

34
Od., XI 539, 573; XXIV 13; Luc. De luctu, 19, and so on.
35
36
Regarding the social figures of natural knowledge, see Nadia Breda ‘Figure sociali dei
saperi naturali. Un percorso fra testi e rappresentazioni dall’etnoscienza all’antropologia dei
saperi’, La Ricerca Folklorica 36 (1997): 111–31.
folklore regarding exotic populations, poisons, poisonings and other fascinating

subjects is reignited. An example of this is the King of Pontus, Mithradates VI
(ca. 115–63 BC).37 This barbaric king, of a land with the sinister fame of being
home to poisonous herbs, turned his body into a laboratory and an apotheke in
which he stored so many poisons and toxins that, having become used to them,
he could no longer kill himself with poison when defeated by Pompey. He was
therefore forced to order a slave to take his life with a sword – his body had
become such a strong antidote after absorbing so many poisonous substances.38
It is interesting that Pliny, dealing with the King’s scientific interests, thought it
necessary to add, ‘we have convincing evidence, not just hearsay’.39 In fact, there
are numerous typically folkloric stories that distinguish the narration of the life
and deeds of Mithradates, and which marked the historical writings thereby
reflecting oral tradition that would also have circulated among the people.
Florus, for example, uses numeric intensification, so characteristic in folklore,
when he writes that ‘while four years were enough to defeat Pyrrhus and thirteen
to defeat Hannibal, Mithradates resisted forty years’.40 At the age of 14, after
having uncovered two attempts to assassinate him (which he survived thanks to
the exceptional strength of his body in resisting all dangers), he abandoned the
royal palace to distance himself in the Paryadres forest, alone, without company,
where he lived as a solitary hunter for seven years.41 We can ask ourselves what
effect all the herbs discovered in these seven years of completely wild life
will have had: what was expected of a pharmakopōlēs, their ability to collect
plants and resist poison, was also evident in this barbaric King. Even in death,
Mithradates’ body did not immediately disappear into the tomb, but continued
to live for a little while: in one inscription, found near the Via Appia, and dated
by Theodor Mommsen to the Augustan era, an incense seller boasts of being
37
The other sovereigns of the Hellenistic reigns, for example Antigonus II Gonatas,
King of Macedonia (c. 319–239 BC), Antiochus III the Great (c. 241–187 BC), Ptolemy
IV Philopator King of Egypt (c. 244–205 BC) were famous experts of poisons, they carried
out toxicology research by testing the various substances on living human beings (see Alain
Touwaide, ‘Les poisons dans le monde antique et byzantin: introduction à une analyse
systémique’, in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. Barbara Bowers (1991),
265–81.
38
Gal., De theriaca ad Pisonem, 16 (K XIV 283–4), App., Bella Mithridatica, 111, etc.
A list of the sources that tell the story of the King’s suicide can be found in Georg Harig, ‘Die
antike Auffassung vom Gift und der Tod des Mithridates’, Schriftenreihe für Geschichte der
Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 14 (1977): 104, n. 3.
39
Plin., HN XXV 3.
40
Flor., 1, 40, 2.
41
Iustin., XXXVII 2, Théodore Reinach, Mitridate Eupatore, Re del Ponto (1960),
96–7.
a kinsman of the King – ‘I am Lutatius Paccius, incense seller, from the royal
family of Mithradates’.42
This tradition certainly did not end in ancient times: this single documented
case can be compared with a long series of descendants of St Paul. The reference
point in the so-called ‘St Paul’s House’ tradition is a passage from the Acts
28: 6, where they tell of how St Paul, immediately following the shipwreck in
Malta, was bitten by a snake. The islanders ‘expected him to swell up with fever
or suddenly drop dead. After waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual
happen to him, they changed their minds and began to claim that he was a god’.
The sanpaolari, snake charmers who healed bites with Malta earth, boasted of
being descendants of St Paul, and as proof they would show a mark in the shape
of a snake somewhere on their skin.43 The sandomenicari, a rival group, would
heal snakebites with a holy relic, with a tooth of their patron saint, St Domenico
di Sora.44
The Liberating Strength of Medicines
The nature of medicine as a physical substance has an important implication for

social relations. Every period of illness is an occasion of dependency and social
control, and consequently being ill always brings an opportunity for reviewing
social relations and a perception of the world. As many ethnographic studies
show, to explain and treat an illness, the ideas of morality and obligations are often
mobilized. The ill person becomes either partially or completely dependent on
others; furthermore, the illness obliges those near to react in many ways: family
meetings, confessions, sacrifices, exorcisms and collective prayers are examples of
the therapies incorporated in family and community relationships.45 Medicines
are an alternative to this type of therapy, a treatment that may be carried out in
private, focusing on the individual body.46
As we can understand from the Hippocratic texts, the relationship between
doctor and patient was not always particularly trusting: often it is noted that the
doctor should be ready to recognize the lies that the patient tells, deliberately or
42
CIL VI 5639: Ego sum L. Lutatius⁄Paccius Thurarius ⁄ de familia rege Mitredatis (sic),
cf. CIL VI 5638; see also Laurence M.V. Totelin, ‘Mithradates’ Antidote – A Pharmacological
Ghost’ (2004), 13.
43
Piero Camporesi, Il libro dei vagabondi (1980), 52–3 and 15–54.
44
David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (1998), 108.
45
Catharina Hjortsberg, ‘Why do the sick not utilise health care? The case of Zambia’,
Health Economics 12 (2003): 755–70; Subhash Pokhrel, ‘Determinants of parental reports
of children’s illnesses: Empirical evidence from Nepal’, Social Science & Medicine 65 (2007):
1106–17.
46
Van der Geest and Whyte, ‘The Charm of Medicines’, 349.
because he is deceived by his own body. The Hippocratic idea of health, in fact,
included many aspects that were foreign to the concrete case of the illness hic
et nunc: the patient had to answer questions on his lifestyle and consequently
be judged by the doctor. In On decorum, doctors were advised to carefully
observe, ‘the patient’s vices, as they often make him lie about his consumption
of that prescribed. Because, by not taking unpleasant drinks, laxatives or so on,
sometimes they die. What they have done never comes out in confession, but all
of the blame lies with the doctor’.47 The discretion becomes particularly refined
in the illnesses of the pudenda, as Plutarch, in De curiositate, observes:
So painful for all of us is the revelation of our own troubles that many die rather
than reveal to physicians some hidden malady. Just imagine Herophilus or
Erasistratus or Asclepius himself, when he was a mortal man, carrying about their
drugs and instruments, calling at one house after another, and inquiring whether
a man had an abscess in the anus or a woman a cancer in the womb. And yet
the inquisitiveness of this profession is a salutary thing. Yet everyone, I imagine,
would have driven such a man away, because he does not wait to be sent for, but
comes unsummoned to investigate others’ infirmities.48
For those who did not want to be judged morally, who did not want to answer
uncomfortable questions, there were alternatives: temple medicine, unorthodox
healers and remedy sellers. The pharmakopōlēs gives the quintessence of the
medical art; he sells healing medicinal substances in increasingly minute
quantities, directly to those that need them, without asking too many questions.
Theophrastus tells of a pharmakopōlēs, Aristophilos of Platea, who had
remedies that could increase sexual potency or even eliminate it completely.
It is noteworthy how the passage in question was cancelled by the English
publisher of the Historia plantarum, Arthur Hort, together with all mentions
of other aphrodisiac and anti-aphrodisiac plants (HP, IX 18, 3–11 Amigues).
Hort’s reasons for this omission are not clear and we cannot but agree with
John Scarborough who characterized Hort as ‘a squeakily prudish mind of the
late Victorian era’ and with George Sarton who wrote: ‘Such prudishness in
a scientific book is truly shocking’.49 Let’s note, however, that talking of such
things is not easy even today, a notably less prudish time.
There is another important implication of being a material substance: from
this characteristic it follows that drugs can be freed of the ‘professional territory
47
On decorum, 14 (Littré IX, 240).
48
Plut., De curiositate 7 (518 D), trans. by W.C. Helmbold (LCL VI).
49
George Sarton, A History of Science (1959), 555, n. 96; John Scarborough, ‘The
pharmacology of sacred plants, herbs, and roots’, in Magika hiera: ancient Greek magic and
religion, eds Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (1991), 170, n. 124.
of doctors and pharmacists’, to use the medical anthropologist Sjaak van der
Geest and Suzan Whyte’s happy remark. According to the scholars, what writing
and, in particular, printing has done to knowledge can be compared to the role
of drugs in medicine:
Writing removes the monopoly on knowledge of those who have produced it

or ‘possess’ it and makes it accessible to others. It objectifies knowledge – that

is, makes it a thing which can stand on its own, be kept in a cupboard, locked
behind doors, handed over to others across place and time. […] In a similar
way, pharmaceuticals objectify the healing art of physicians and make it into
some-thing that can be used by anyone. Pharmaceuticals break the hegemony of
professionals and enable people to help themselves. Medicines, therefore, have
a ‘liberating’ power, particularly in those societies where it is difficult to control
their circulation and use.50
Numerous ancient recipes for antidotes, collyriums, pills and so on that were
used over the centuries in Europe and the Islamic Orient, written and rewritten
in many languages, by their very materiality could be freed from their original
context, and were effective even without the humoral theories of Antiquity.
Naturally, the recipes of ancient medicines have undergone many changes over
time51 – almost all of their ingredients have been changed repeatedly. But the
same can be said of any knowledge, even any material object with a long enough
life: such as the legendary ship Argo, which was replaced piece by piece until
finally all of the pieces were new, but the ship was still the same – the only one
worthy of the name Argo. Despite all the changes due to the spirit of the time,
new discoveries, religious constrictions, geographic characteristics and so on,
medicine recipes continue to live under their ancient names, desperately far
from the professional territory of the doctors of ancient times.
Conclusions
At the turn of the fourteenth century, a famous Catalan astrologer and physician,
Arnaldus de Villa Nova (1238–1311), believed that the ancient pharmaceutical
arsenal was no longer adequate for healing the world in its old age. There was
Van der Geest and Whyte, ‘The Charm of Medicines’, 348.

50
See Véronique Boudon-Millot and Françoise Micheau, eds, Histoire, transmission

51
et acculturation de la Thériaque, forthcoming. For the theriaca that performed miracles

during the plague in Tours in the fifth and sixth centuries, see a study by Jacqueline Vons,
‘Thériaque ou miracle? Les enjeux des miracles pour les habitants de Tours aux Ve et VIe
siècles’, Caesarodunum, 35–6 (2001–02): 471–87.
a need for new drugs to restore youth to humanity.52 Nevertheless, such a

radical step as the construction of a new system of onsite knowledge that would
be intentionally liberated for this reason was never taken: no completely and
exclusively ‘Christian’ pharmacology was ever created. For example, it does not
matter how ‘Christian’ the name of the medicine Panchristum may have seemed,
in reality it is an ancient panchrestum remedy (or rather, ‘useful against all
infirmities’). And another remedy, Potio Sancti Pauli, despite the fact that it was
defined in the Trotula – a medieval compendium of pharmaceutical recipes –
as an invention by St Paul, is immediately followed by the addendum: ‘This is
the same potion that the Romans called potio maior, because Paul the Great
changed it’.53
But it is certain that this freeing of drugs from their original context, the
materiality that inevitably makes them subject to change, already existed in
ancient times: in fact, the famous theriaca was not invented by Andromachus
the Elder, Nero’s archiater, ex nihilo; instead it was a change that he made to
mithridatium, a very mysterious antidote of a Pontic king. But even before
this, mithridatium itself was changed: the Romans, after having discovered the
original recipe of the King’s famous antidote – in his writings – a sign of his
incredible resistance to every attempt to kill him, were very deluded, refusing
to believe that ‘two dry nuts, two figs, and twenty rue leaves ground with salt’54
could give consistency to such a powerful antidote. Therefore, the recipe was
changed over again: an African lizard was added,55 as well as Lemnian earth,
Chian wine, Attic honey, nard, pepper, opobalsam, cassia,56 almost all the spices
known at the time. We do not know much about Mithradates’ theories, maybe
not even Andromachus the Elder knew much, but being a composite material,
mithridatium took on a life of its own – it could be prepared, modified, sold,
counterfeited, kept locked in a cabinet, stolen and so on.57
And the same happened with the recipe of the composed drug – already
famous in ancient times – named philonium after its inventor, a certain Philo of
Tarsus. He wrote the recipe in elegiac couplets: since it was reproduced in the
52
Emmett Randolph Daniel, The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle
Ages (1975), 92–3.
53
Trotula: un compendio medievale di medicina delle donne, ed. Monica H. Green
(2009), 327.
54
Plin., HN XXIII 149: ‘II nucibus siccis, item ficis totidem et rutae foliis XX simul
tritis, addito salis grano’.
55
Gal., De antidotis, 2, 1 (K XIV 108–9).
56
Gal., De antidotis, 2, 1–10 (K XIV 108–65), passim, Scrib., Compos., 170.
57
For a transformation of mithridatium into a Roman medication, see Totelin,
‘Mithradates’ Antidote’, who observes, among other things (17): ‘As a drug including all the
most expensive materia medica known at that time, Mithridatium was truly the reflection of
an Empire at its commercial and political apogee’.
writings of Galen,58 it was translated into Arabic together with Galen’s other
books to then return to the West, translated this time from Arabic to Latin and
consecrated by names such as Avicenna and Mesuè. It was never restored to its
original state, of course – compared to the philonium reproduced in Galen’s
work, which contained saffron, pyrethrum, euphorbia, spikenard, white pepper,
henbane, opium and Attic honey, the recipe of the ‘reverted’ philonium was
considerably enriched with pearls, amber and other ingredients. In this way, in
the pharmacopeia and the antidotarii of Europe, two parallel philonia existed;
one called Roman (despite the fact that its author originated from Asia Minor)
and the other Persian (which was first translated from Greek to Arabic and then
from Arabic to Latin).59 It is also interesting that philonium entered into the
so-called Antidotarium Nicolai (of a certain Niccolò, of whom we know just the
name and the fact that he belonged to the Salerno school in the first half of the
XII century): a rich collection of various pharmaceutical composites chosen by
Frederick II as a base for the first official recipe book, which until the appearance
of the local pharmacopeia was the most widespread reference text in Europe.60
In 1200s, the Antidotarium was translated in Tuscan, a text in which we can
read: ‘Filoneum magnum, which means “new friend”’.61 And so the antidote –
which once spoke in the first person in elegiac couplets: ‘I am a great invention
of the doctor Philo of Tarsus for mortals against many pains caused by illnesses’,62
became the ‘new friend’ (from the change of a letter: Philonium – Filoneum),
with the addition of new ingredients to the recipe – despite all this, can still be
recognized as the ancient philonium. After all, is Philo’s gift for mortals not a
kind of ‘new friend’?
As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, people need new medicines as
well as old ones. The new ones help where the old ones do not. But, neither
completely replaces the other forever: they will always coexist, responding to
society’s various demands. The concept of infirmitas has many dimensions, and
even its most materialistic and concrete counterpart – pharmaceuticals – is not
free from the symbolic component. In the continual production of aetiologies for
diseases, the materiality of medicines and physicality of illnesses are inextricably
linked with the idea of the wildness of Nature – the main supply for healing
substances, with cultural expectations and fears, with hopes and the attempt to
control the uncontrollable.
Gal., De comp. med. sec. loc., 1, 4 (K XIII 267–9).

58
Both recipes (philonium Persicum and philonium Romanum) were known until the
59
1700s; they were included in the Encyclopédie by Diderot et D’Alambert (Vol. XII, 509).
60
Lucia Fontanella, Un volgarizzamento tardo duecentesco fiorentino dell’Antidotarium
Nicolai, Montréal, McGill University, Osler Library 7628 (2000), VIII–IX.
61
Fontanella, Un volgarizzamento, 26.
62
Gal., De comp. med. sec. loc., 1, 4 (K XIII 267), For the edition of the text see Hugh
Lloyd-Jones and Peter J. Parsons, eds Supplementum Hellenisticum (1983), 332–3.
Chapter 11
Alternative Medicine in Pre-Roman and
Republican Italy: Sacred Springs, Curative
Baths and ‘Votive Religion’
Alison Griffith
Introduction: Bathing as a ‘Secular’ Activity?
As with so many Roman ‘institutions’ of the imperial period, the practice of bathing
for hygiene, exercise, socializing and healing – the cleansing of body, mind and
spirit – owed a debt to the Greeks and, as this chapter will argue, to other peoples
in Italy. For this experience, Roman imperial baths (thermae) offered a sumptuous
and grandiose setting, but graffiti and epitaphs also reveal a range of activities
occurring at bathing establishments, from light meals to sexual encounters.1
Such evidence suggests that bathing in the great imperial thermae was strictly a
secular pursuit. We must recall, however, that water – especially the ‘living’ water
of springs, rivers and lakes – was regarded as sacred and as possessing a power to
cleanse or heal unlike any other natural substance. Therefore water is inseparable
from the concept of infirmitas.2 Thus the predominantly secular character of
Roman bathing in the imperial period is inconsistent with this widespread ancient
belief about the sanctity of water and its supernatural and therapeutic powers.
This chapter examines votive activity and physical interaction with therapeutic
waters at sites in Italy prior to Roman control of the peninsula. An increasing
number of sites in northern Italy – areas inhabited by Etruscans, Venetic peoples
and Celtic tribes – encourage us to reconsider the development of Roman bathing,
which is generally thought to have originated in southern Italy.3 The practices of
the peoples of pre-Roman Italy are less known because the available evidence
1
Garrett G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (1999).
2
See also Ria Berg’s chapter in this volume.
3
Inge Nielsen, Thermae et Balnea: The Architecture and Cultural History of Roman
Public Baths (1990); Fikret Yegül, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (1992); idem.,
Bathing in the Roman World (2010). Francesco Di Capua (‘Appunti su l’origine e sviluppo delle
terme romane’, Accademia di architettura, lettere e belle arti 20 (1940): 81–160) and Emanuela
Fabbricotti (‘I bagni nelle prime ville romane’, Cronache Pompeiane 2 (1976): 29–111) have
individually argued for an Italian origin for bath complexes in the third and second centuries
consists mainly of physical remains, a few inscriptions and occasional references

in the works of Greek and Roman authors. Although they are few, such references
reveal that the Romans were aware of their Italic neighbours and, we may surmise,
their cultural practices. The aim herein is to show that where bathing, healing and
ritual activity are concerned, evidence from sites of therapeutic waters around Italy
reveals an important sub-stratum of Roman bathing practice.
To begin, we must query whether imperial baths were actually devoid of

religious activity. Certainly baths with theophoric names have not produced
much evidence of shrines, temples or votive dedications. The gods most
frequently represented by statues in imperial thermae – Asclepius, Hygieia,
Hercules, Bacchus, Venus and Apollo – are those that were also most commonly
associated with springs and thermal waters.4 However, the general lack of votive
dedications in thermae suggests that these statues fulfilled a decorative rather
than a ritual purpose.5 Numerous statues of Asclepius and Hygieia, the gods most
commonly represented in bathhouses in Italy, North Africa and Asia Minor in
the second century, are thus interpreted as evidence for the association of bathing
with health, rather than with religious activity at the baths.6 Even in baths that
contained imperial cult shrines, dedications do not attest any assimilation of the
emperor to Asclepius, or any capacity to heal.7 Nevertheless isolated examples
of votive acts occurring in baths are attested, especially in Gaul, Germany and
North Africa. Such dedications include statues set up or baths restored, and
occasional votive figurines in terracotta or wood dedicated at baths, or in temples
and shrines associated with the water source that fed certain curative baths.8 We
surmise that thank-offerings for healing were the most common, but perhaps not
the only motivation for such dedications. While it remains difficult to identify
specific cult areas within bath structures solely on the basis of architectural
features, a few inscriptions refer to the dedication of a shrine (sacrum) and thus
suggest cult activity.9 In the Graeco-Roman world Asclepius was the deity most
BCE. Here sweating rooms in farmhouses later developed into three-room suites sharing a
heat-source with the kitchen.
4
René Ginouves, ‘L’Eau dans les Sanctuaires Médicaux’, Bulletin de Correspondance
Héllenique, Supplement 28 (1994): 237–43.
5
Yegül, Baths, 124–5; Nielsen, Thermae et Balnea, 146; Fagan, Bathing, 5, 172; P. Aupert,
‘Les thermes comme lieux de culte’, in Les Thermes Romains: Actes de la table ronde organise par
l’École française de Rome (Collection de l’École Française de Rome 142) (1991): 185–92, at 192.
6
Hubertus Manderscheid, Die Skulpturenausstattung der kaiserzeitlichen Thermenan-
lagen (1981), 34–5; idem., ‘Römische Thermen: Aspekte von Architektur, Technik und
Ausstattung’, in Geschichte der Wasserversorgung, Vol. 3, Die Wasserversorgung antiker Städte
(1988), 120; Fagan, Bathing, 89–90.
7
Aupert, ‘Les thermes’, 189–90.
8
9
Alternative Medicine in Pre-Roman and Republican Italy 187
likely to have baths directly associated with a temple. However, a case has been
made for the syncretic potential of ‘therapeutic-soteriological’ gods, including
not just Asclepius, but also gods with a military or ‘warrior’ dimension such
as Apollo – commonly associated with baths in Gaul, Germany and northern
Italy – and other gods to whom the epithet soter (saviour) was sometimes
attached in dedications.10 Finally, ancient sources indicate that several deities
were connected with healing in Rome including Apollo, Aesclepius, Salus,

Anna Perenna, Minerva Medica and Bona Dea. The sanctuary of Anna Perenna
featured a spring, and the temple of Salus may have been sited near the Fons Cati.
Votives (but not bathing facilities) have been recovered in association with the
temples of Asclepius and Minerva Medica, and there were baths at Bona Dea’s
sanctuary, probably reserved for lustral bathing by the Arval Brethren.11 This
evidence is insufficient to show that religious activity regularly occurred at baths,
or that bath buildings routinely contained shrines or temples no longer extant, or
even that during the imperial period there were ritual aspects of Roman bathing
emanating from its association with healing.12 Taken together, however, statues
of gods, occasional votive dedications, and the epigraphically attested existence
of shrines within baths indicate that gods were present in bathing space even if
they were not necessarily venerated there. Bathers in the imperial period were
obviously aware of the healthful benefits of regular bathing, and even if most
attributed those benefits to the water itself, at least some also recognized the
healing power of particular gods frequently associated with bathing structures.
The Romans’ belief in the sanctity of water and its supernatural powers has
implications for the early development of bathing in Republican Italy. In Roman
religious practice, many rituals, and especially pre-ritual purification, required
‘living’ water. That is, naturally flowing water from springs, rivers or the sea rather
than water delivered by pipes. For this reason many temples and sanctuaries were
located close to water sources, or had a fountain, basin or well near the entrance
or at the foot of the stairs leading to the temple.13 Natural springs at some sites
indicated the home of a deity, as at the Sanctuary of Fortuna at Praeneste, and
literary sources attest that some rituals required water from specific springs in
Rome, as with the Fons Camenae at the Porta Capena, which was used by the
10
I. Chirassi-Colombo, ‘Acculturation et Cultes Thérapeutiques’, in F. Dunand and
P. Lévêque (eds), Le Syncrétisme dans les Religions de’L’Antiquité (1975).
11
Ingrid Edlund-Berry, ‘Healing, Health and Well-Being: Archaeological Evidence for
Issues of Health Concerns in Ancient Italy’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 8 (2006): 81–8;
J. Scheid, ‘Sanctuaires et Thermes sous L’Empire’, in Les Thermes Romains: Actes de la table
ronde organisée par l’École française de Rome (1991), 205–16.
12
Estee Dvorjetski, Leisure, Pleasure and Healing: Spa Culture and Medicine in the
Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (2007), 95–8.
13
Edlund-Berry, ‘Healing’, 162–80; Scheid, ‘Sanctuaires et Thermes’, 209–12.
Vestal Virgins.14 Where there was no spring, architectural remains sometimes

attest the collection and storage of rainwater. At the temple of Juno at Gabii,
for example, rainwater was channelled into a cistern that supplied two wells
accessible from the portico. Similarly, at the hilltop sanctuary at Terracina,
water was collected in cisterns that fed wells accessible from the main platform
supporting the temple.15
Apart from fulfilling the requirements of ritual purification, Roman authors

report that some water sources were highly regarded for their therapeutic
properties, and that Romans were aware of and believed in the healthful effect
of minerals in the water. According to Pliny the Elder, the waters from the
Albula spring near Rome were beneficial for wounds.16 When drunk or used
as a purgative, the ice-cold Cutiliae aided the stomach, sinews and the whole
body generally because they contained bitumen and soda (bituminata et
nitrosa). Aluminous waters helped paralysis, and sulphurous waters improved
the sinews and muscles.17 Thus water was frequently prescribed for a range of
ailments, but was especially popular because of the widespread theory that
disease and ill health were caused by an imbalance of bodily humours.18 On
the advice of physicians, patients might partake of a particular source of water
by drinking it, immersing themselves in it or sitting in its vapour and inhaling
it. Hydrotherapy was first promoted in Rome by the second-century BCE
physician Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was known for prescribing cold water.19
One of his followers, Antonius Musa, famously cured Augustus in 23 BCE with
‘cold water fomentations’.20 By this time, bathing was developing into the multi-
step process that is familiar to us from the imperial period, and with the use of
hydraulic cement the Romans were able to create architecture to accommodate
this practice. Much of this development occurred in Campanian cities, of which
Baiae is a signal example. Here numerous bathing establishments exploited
the thermo-mineral waters, although bathing at this site seems to have been a
E. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae 1:216 (1993), s.v. ‘Camenae,
14
Camenarum Fons et Lucus’.

15
M. Guaitoli, ‘Gabii’, La Parola del Passato 36 (1981): 152–73; L. Borsari, ‘Terracina:
Del Tempio di Giove Anxur’, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1984): 96–111, at 104;
G. Lugli, Forma Italiae Regio I, v.1.1: Ager Pomptinus: Anxur-Tarracina, Rome (1927);
Filippo Coarelli, I Santuari del Lazio in Età Repubblicana (1987), 16, 119.
16
H.N. 31.6.
17
Vitruvius, De Arch. 8.3.4; Pliny H.N. 31.6 and 32.
18
Ralph Jackson, ‘Spas, waters and hydrotherapy in the Roman World’, in J. Delaine
and D.E. Johnston (eds), Roman Baths and Bathing v.1: Bathing and Society, v.2: Design and
Context (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement v.37.1–2) (1999) 37.1: 107–16.
19
Pliny H.N. 26.7–8; 29.5; R. Jackson, ‘Waters and Spas in the Classical World’, in
R. Porter (ed.) The Medical History of Waters and Spas (1990).
20
Suetonius Aug. 81.1; Pliny H.N. 29.5.
secular activity, with the possible exception of annual rites to Minerva on 19–23
March.21 No votive objects have been recovered from Baiae, or any sanctuaries
to deities such as Aesculapius or Hygieia.22
Despite the widespread belief in the sanctity of natural sources of water
and their divine protection, only Vitruvius explicitly connects the sanctity
of the water with its healing capacity, noting that all temples should be sited
near springs, especially Aesculapius, Salus and those gods who are sought for
their healing powers. He further observes that ‘salubrious springs’ cure bodily
ailments more quickly, and the deity associated with the place consequently
acquires greater esteem and increased authority.23 Thus to the Roman mind,
health and healing were pertinent not to just to doctors, but to the perceived
healing properties of water and the deities to whom the water was sacred. In
Antiquity the list of diseases thought to be remedied, or at least relieved by
partaking of or bathing in water was long, and included diseases of the joints,
muscles, nervous system, digestion, urinary tract and kidneys, skin, eyes and
lungs, as well as fevers and infertility. But, as Vitruvius suggests, it was the divine
power inherent in the water as much as its chemical composition that achieved a
cure. While we usually associate healing with Aesculpius and Hygieia, Vitruvius
hints that other deities were involved when sacred waters were the source of the
cure. Because the Romans ‘atomized’ their gods, no single deity was associated
with springs or natural bodies of water; rather, each spring, river and lake had its
own tutelary deity. Like the collective ‘nymphs’, some deities were anonymous,
but many had names, as with Rome’s most famous springs, which were sacred to
Egeria, Juturna, the Camenae and Anna Perenna. In effect, there were numerous
deities whose powers included the capacity to heal through water, as the younger
Pliny made clear in his famous account of the source of the Clitumnus River.
He describes a temple close to the river and a statue of the god, surrounded by
several shrines, each with its own god, and with its own name and cult and in
some cases even its own spring (Sparsa sunt circa sacella complura, totidemque di.
Sua cuique veneratio suum nomen, quibusdam vero etiam fontes).24
Sources, Sanctuaries and Votives
Ancient authors thus attest to the Romans’ awareness of famous springs, their
curative value and even the divine protection of such sources, but a growing
21
Yegül, Baths, 93–110, 125, n. 70; Ibid., ‘The Thermo-Mineral Complex at Baiae and
De Balneis Puteolanis’, Art Bulletin 78.1 (1996): 137–61.
22
Yegül, ‘The Thermo-Mineral Complex’; Medri et al., ‘In Bainao Sinu: le Piccole
Terme di Baia’, in DeLaine and Johnston (1999) 37.2: 207–19.
23
Vitruvius, De Architectura 1.2.7.
24
Pliny, Ep. 8.8.
body of archaeological material provides, and will continue to provide,

important new insights concerning this relationship between divine power and
therapeutic waters. For example, Roman improvements to sites in Britain, Gaul
and Germany illustrate a two-way process of acculturation in which the Romans
readily adapted to ‘spa’ bathing in mineral waters. Evidence for temples and votive
dedications associated with bathing establishments is far more prevalent in
European provinces, in part because specific deities were associated with natural
water sources in Gallic religious tradition, especially those with therapeutic
qualities. The habit of bathing or otherwise partaking of these waters to improve
health appears to have been well established prior to Roman conquest, but at
several sites the Romans added a formal bathing structure and recognized an
equivalent Roman god in the local deity. The sanctuary of Sulis-Minerva in Bath
is perhaps the best-known example of this phenomenon, but the waters sacred to
Apollo Grannus at Aachen and the Aquae Helveticae at Baden, sacred to Mercury
and Bacchus, were equally popular with Romans, and especially with legionary
soldiers, whose need for hydrotherapy is obvious.25 Nevertheless a remarkable
range of votive objects from the pre-Roman period has been recovered from
these sites. For example, numerous drinking vessels recovered from the Aquae
Helveticae and other sites may attest the consumption of water. Retrieved from
the bottom of the spring at Bath were coins, curse tablets, jewellery, gemstones
and pewter vessels, as well as anatomical votives including a tin mask and two
breasts in ivory and bronze.26
Italy abounds in natural springs and other water sources, with which the
many peoples who inhabited this territory prior to Roman control interacted.
Some groups are better attested archaeologically than others, and yet the meagre
remains still reveal that veneration of divine powers associated with natural
water sources was more or less universal. Among the better attested areas where
springs, votives and evidence of hydrotherapy coincide are the eastern Po Valley
(Emilia-Romagna region), southern Etruria (modern Tuscany) and northern
Latium; however, it is likely that the number of such sites was higher and more
widely distributed in Antiquity.27 Material remains take two forms: architectural
remains that show how springs were channelled into a basin or tank, and votive
objects dedicated to gods.28 Most familiar to us are the thousands of votive
Tacitus Hist. 1.67; Jackson, ‘Waters and Spas’.

25
B. Cunliffe, The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, v.2: The Finds from the Sacred Spring
26
(1988).
27
L. Cerchiai, ‘Acque, grotte e dei: I santuari indigeni nell’Italia meridionale’, Ocnus 7
(1999): 205–22 has a list of cult places in southern Italy located at springs or in grottoes from
which votive material has been recovered.
28
Jackson, ‘Waters and Spas’; idem., ‘Spas, waters and hydrotherapy’; C. D’Amato,
‘Terme e Cure Termali nell’Antica Roma’, Terme Romane e Vita Quotidiana: Supplemento
all’Edizione Romana della Mostra (1989).
objects that have been recovered from temples and sanctuaries all over Italy,
which since 1986 have been systematically published in the series Corpus delle
Stipi Votive in Italia and are now the focus of considerable scholarly attention.
There is general consensus that votive objects attest an intentional ritual act
wherever they are found, but it is often difficult to determine the donor’s
motivation. Votive objects, especially anatomical votives, at thermo-mineral sites
can almost certainly be regarded as thank-offerings to the god for good health,
healing, fertility or some other outcome attributable to the waters themselves.
Some votives, such as cups, attest consumption, aspersion or libation of mineral
water, but architectural remains at some sites also show that sacred waters were
captured in a large basin to facilitate immersion in the waters themselves.
The Po Valley
The mountains along the north-eastern Po River Valley are rife with natural
springs. This area was inhabited by Venetic peoples who are archaeologically
attested from the ninth century BCE and who had major settlements at Ateste
(Este) and Patavium (Padova). The site of the famous springs of Aponus has
been identified with the modern city of Montegrotto Terme where, in a series
of excavations beginning in 1892, almost 6,000 vases, over half of them cups
still intact, as well as a number of bronze statuettes of human figures, horses,
lots and anatomical votives (one right arm and two legs, all miniature) among
other material, were recovered beside an ancient lake.29 Although most of this
material is pre-Roman (seventh-second centuries BCE), there are Roman-
period dedications and references to the oracular lots of Geryon.30 Pliny the
Elder reported that these springs lacked medicinal benefits and were home to
frogs, but other sources attest their therapeutic value.31 It is likely that Aponus
can be identified with the Celtic god Maponus, and thus also with Apollo.
Further north at Lago di Cadore, excavations under the railway station in
Calalzo revealed a considerable quantity and range of votive material from a
sanctuary near a sulphurous spring.32 The inscriptions are predominantly
Venetic, but there are 14 in Latin. Among this material were 18 small simpuli
(sacrificial bowls) and bronze anatomical votives including two feet, a leg, two
arms and the head of a woman. Dedicatory inscriptions on small handles refer
to Trumusijat, or Apollo. The material dates from the fourth century BCE to
29
M.G. Maioli and A. Mastrocinque, La Stipe di Villa di Villa e i Culti degli Antichi
Veneti (1992), 35–40.
30
Suetonius Tib. 14.
31
Pliny, H.N. 31.61 and 2.227; Scholiast of Verona in Aen. I.250; Claudian, Carm.
Min. 26.85–101; Ausonius, Ordo urb. nob. 19.159–62; Cassiodorus Var. 2.39 and Ennodius,
Ep. 224.5.8. See also Chirassi Colombo, ‘Acculturation et Cultes Thérapeutiques’, 109.
32
Maioli and Mastrocinque, La Stipe di Villa, 48.
Roman period. The large number of cups and beakers found at Montegrotto
and at nearby Abano Terme and the simpuli from Lago di Cadore is typical in
the Veneto.33 Consumption or aspersion of the water with these vessels is not
out of the question, although libation of the water may be more likely, especially
with the simpuli.34 The lack of architectural remains makes it difficult to prove
that immersion in the water also occurred, but the remarkable number of votives
at Montegrotto and Lago di Cadore and the centuries-long use of these sites
continuing into the Roman period demonstrate Romans’ belief in the healing
capacity of water and the gods associated with it.
South of the Po River, the northern slopes of the Apennine Mountains
(modern Emilia Romagna) are rich in natural springs. Evidence for sacred sites,
mostly consisting of votives and ceramic remains, is clustered in river valleys,
especially those of the Reno, Idice, Santerno, Senio and Montone rivers, but
votive material dating from the late sixth to the early fourth century BCE has
also been recovered from sites around Modena, Bologna and Marzabotto.35 The
majority of this material consists of schematic bronze figurines of men, women
and animals and, at some sites, small ceramic drinking vessels, in addition to a few
anatomical votives. The locally manufactured figurines represent a range of well-
established types (Etrusco-Padana, Umbro-Padana or Umbro-Settentrionale).
This area was easily accessible from northern Etruria and Umbria, and from
the late seventh or sixth century BCE the Etruscans moved northward and
established several settlements. Material evidence suggests that trade was a
significant motivation for this expansion, but it also reveals a cultural and ethnic
blending that is not always easily disentangled and that is made more complex by
the increasing presence of Gallic tribes, in some areas possibly as early as the sixth
century BCE. Scholars have noted a significant variation in votive types between
central and western Emilia (west of Bologna), where bronze figurines are more
common, and the Romagna region, where ceramic cups and vases predominate.36
Let us begin with the sites closest to the Apennines and open to Etruscan
influence more directly and at an earlier date, of which there are several located
a few kilometres to the south and southwest of Bologna. At Montese, 20
bronze figurines of various regional types were recovered near Lago Bracciano,
a naturally occurring lake created from a salt-iodide spring, the modern Rio
Acqua Salata. These schematic renditions of the human body range in size from
6 to 8 centimetres to 14 centimetres tall and have incised details for genitals,
breasts and sometimes a navel. They are interpreted as thank-offerings to a
33
Maioli and Mastrocinque, La Stipe di Villa, 40.
34
Maioli and Mastrocinque, La Stipe di Villa, 38, 51.
35
M. Miari, Stipi Votive dell’Etruria Padana (2000), 238–9 and Figure 1.
36
Miari, Stipi Votive, 63–74.
god (identity unknown) that represent the dedicator him- or herself.37 Five
figurines of farm animals, predominantly sheep, remind us that human and
animal health was intertwined.38 Six human figurines of the northern Etruscan
and northern Umbrian type ranging from 6 centimetres to 14 centimetres
high were recovered from springs around Monte Capra, about 10 kilometres
west of Bologna. At the suburban Fontile Sanctuary at Marzabotto there are
remains of a roofed, terracotta-lined basin (7.5 × 9 m) where the spring water

was captured and contained, some of it in a well 1.5 m deep. It is possible that
immersion in the water occurred in the large basin. From another, open-air part
of the sanctuary bronze votives including figurines and anatomicals and bowls
in marble and terracotta were recovered, as well as a ‘Little Master’ cup dating
to the sixth century and two Siana cups dating to around 540 BCE. These finds
indicate that the sanctuary was in use from the mid-sixth to the fourth century
BCE. Terracotta fragments from the akroterial (roof-top) sculpture suggest
Daedalus (associated with hydraulic works) as the god of the place, although
there is no other proof of this attribution.39
East of Bologna, in the modern Romagna region, there are a number
of natural cave and other sites that were frequented for several centuries and
that seem to have been sacred to Celtic and Umbrian peoples, as well as to the
Etruscans. The Grotto del Re Tiberio is an excellent example. This was a natural
cave in the Senio River valley used for funerary and perhaps also cultic activity
from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. Here water from rain and
percolation through the rock was collected in basins near the entrance. A series
of excavations has recovered four bronze figurines, two Attic red figure covers
to lekanai, and various cups in Attic and Etruscan black glaze. Most notable are
hundreds of miniaturized cups and olle recovered, which suggest consumption
or libation of the waters, and subsequent dedication of the cups.40 Similarly, the
site of Castrocaro in the Montone Valley, near Forli, is still known for its natural
salt-iodide springs. A cache of items found by a farmer at a depth of about
1.5 m included a bronze figurine, a black glaze kylix and fineware plates and
41 miniaturized ceramic cups in impasto and also levigated clay. This material
was recovered from a stratum that included ash and charcoal, and thus it is still
37
38
B. Santillo Frizell, ‘Curing the Flock. The Use of Healing Waters in Roman Pastoral
Economy’, in B. Santillo Frizell (ed.), PECUS. Man and Animal in Antiquity. Proceedings
of the conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9–12, 2002 (2004), 80–90;
M. Söderland, ‘Man and Animal in Antiquity: Votive Figures in Central Italy from the 4th
to the 1st centuries BC’, in B. Santillo Frizell (ed.), PECUS. Man and Animal in Antiquity.
Proceedings of the conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9–12, 2002 (2004),
277–94.
39
40
uncertain whether it belonged to a burial, or whether it was votive material

relating to a natural water source, as suggested by the miniature cups and vases.41
Although it is outside the scope of this survey, the material remains from
sites in the Po Valley demonstrate the interface of Venetic, Umbrian, Celtic and
Etruscan culture. At sites of known or suspected therapeutic waters, votives
of many types dedicated over a long period of time demonstrate belief in the
curative powers of the water and the gods. Several of these sites were lakes or had
constructed basins, which strongly suggests that immersion in the waters was
possible. Sites in Etruria, to which we turn now, have also furnished evidence for
immersion in therapeutic waters.
Etruria
Several ancient authors report – and modern excavations and surveys

confirm – that Etruria was rife with hot and cold springs. The therapeutic
capacity of these springs in Antiquity is further attested by votive dedications,
although architectural remains of bathing establishments have so far been found
only at a few sites.42 The so-called ‘Lago degli Idoli’ (Lago delle Ciliegeta), at
the source of the Arno on Monte Falterona, was drained in 1838 in order to
recover over 2,600 objects that had been thrown into the water. These included
fragments of bronze and iron armour and arms, around 650 bronze statuettes,
1,000 pieces of aes rude (rough bronze ‘coins’), and around 600 anatomical
votives, all dating from the late sixth to the early second centuries BCE. The
quality of the water, attributed to bitumen, was such that beech and oak trunks
at the bottom were completely preserved, which strongly suggests that those
who dedicated the votives bathed in the water.43
At the Aquae Caeretanae (Sasso di Furbara) the recovery of two votive
dedications to Jupiter and Fons (or Fontes), attested by inscriptions, raises the
possibility of a small shrine annexed to the site of the bathing establishment.44
Numerous votives, part of a sanctuary and a bathing establishment, have been

41
Lidio Gasperini, ‘Gli Etruschi e le Sorgenti Termali’, Etruria Meridionale: conoscenza,

42
conservazione, fruizione: Atti del Convegno, Viterbo, 29/30 novembre–1 dicembre 1985
(1988), 27 n. 1–11; R. Chellini, Acque Sorgive Salutari e Sacre in Etruria (Italiae Regio VII):
Ricerche Archeologiche e di Topografia Antica (2002), 236–40.
43
V. Boldi, ‘Il culto delle acque e le stipe votive salutari nel territorio Aretino’, Atti e
Memorie della Accademia Petrarca di Lettere, Arti e Scienze 25: 306–13; Chellini, Acque,
189–93.
44
R. Cosentino and P. Sabbatini Tumolesi, ‘L’edificio Termale delle Aquae Caeretanae’,
Miscellanea Ceretana 17.1 (1989): 95–112, at 109–12; Gasperini, ‘Gli Etruschi’, 31–2.
found at the Aquae Apollinares (Stigliano).45 A great quantity of gold, silver and
bronze objects and coins was found at the Aquae Apollinares Novae (Vicarello) in
the mid-nineteenth century, including 400 kilograms of aes rude and some 5,250
coins, including 1,400 bronze aes grave and over 50 gold coins. Silver and bronze
objects were also recovered, including several open-shape vessels inscribed to
Apollo, suitable for holding liquids.46 The coins, thrown into the water itself, span
several centuries (fourth century BCE to the fourth century CE), but the vessels
in precious metal date only to the imperial period. No temple is attested by the
architectural remains, although one is inferred on the basis of the number and value
of the votives recovered.47 Apollo is thought to be the tutelary deity of the waters,
on the basis of a statue identified as a copy of an original by the Athenian sculptor
Leochares, a votive altar to Apollo and an inscription to Apollo, Silvanus, Aesculapius
and the Nymphs.48 Such is the quantity of evidence for votive dedications and
bathing in thermo-mineral waters in South Etruria that some baths have now been
re-evaluated. For example, the large hall at the Aquae Tauri (Civitavecchia) from
which votive statuary and an altar to the nymphs were recovered has now been
reinterpreted as a shrine to the tutelary deities of the spring.49
Latium
As we have seen, votive objects took many forms: terracotta cups and vessels,
coins and bronze human and animal figurines, and even statues in gold and
silver. Of all the votive material recovered from sites in Italy, however, anatomical
votives are by far the most common, especially during the fourth–first centuries
BCE.50 Most of these were mould-made and were almost certainly purchased
premade in shops rather than specially commissioned (there are exceptions).
Although they are especially common at sites in Latium, anatomical votives are
found throughout Italy and were dedicated to a range of deities – even at temples
and sanctuaries without thermal springs, or to deities not specifically known as
45
L. Gasperini, Scoperte archeologiche a Stigliano (Canale Monterano) (1976); Ibid.,
‘Gli Etruschi’.
46
Chellini, Acque, nos 4.11.1, 4.12; Ernst Künzl and Susanna Künzl, ‘Aquae
Apollinares/Vicarello (Italien)’, in R. Chevallier (ed.), Les Eaux thermales et les cultes des
eaux en Gaule et dans les provinces voisine: Actes du colloque, 28–30 septembre 1990 (1992),
273–96; A.M. Colini, ‘La Stipe delle Aque Salutari di Vicarello: Notizie sul Complesso
della Scoperta’, Rendiconti della Pontifiche Accademia Romana Archeologica 40 (1967/1968):
35–56.
47
Künzl and Künzl, ‘Aquae’, 274.
48
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 11.3294 (inscription) and 11.3296 (altar).
49
Yegül, Bathing, 113–14.
50
Fay Glinister, ‘Reconsidering “religious Romanization”’, in Celia E. Schultz and Paul
B. Harvey (eds), Religion in Republican Italy (2006), 10–33.
‘healing gods’. Survey archaeology increasingly shows that sanctuaries dotted the
Italian countryside, and so as the number of known and excavated sanctuaries
grows, so also will the number of known votives. The religious significance of
anatomical votives should not be underestimated. These were not merely left
at the temple of the god; rather, their dedication represents a ritual act, even
if it is one whose details are unknown to us now. The thousands of surviving
anatomical votives attest the widespread popular engagement with divine power
at this basic but very important level, and it is clear that such offerings were
made for the cure of animals as well as humans.51 Anatomical votives appear to
be the easiest to interpret, even without dedicatory inscriptions: they represent
either requests to be healed (although examples with actual pathologies are
rare) or thank-offerings for a cure. Their meaning may be dependent on context,
however. Genitalia might represent the request or gratitude for a cure from
venereal disease, but they might equally express a petition for fertility, or mark
a rite of passage into puberty. Other body parts might represent function rather
than malfunction: feet could represent a journey or pilgrimage, hands a prayer
and so on.52 While there may be alternative interpretations, it seems most likely
that anatomical (or other) votives at sites with sacred springs specifically indicate
thank-offerings for matters related to the body: healing, well-being and fertility.
Nearly 8,400 terracotta votives of body parts and animal figurines were
recovered from the sanctuary at the Ponte di Nona, on the road between Rome
and Praeneste. This was a large and thriving religious centre to an unidentified
deity from the fourth to at least the late second century BCE.53 A rescue
excavation in 1975–76 revealed the remains of a temple, bath suite, a possible
pool, nymphaeum and other buildings, as well as the votive material, which
had been intentionally buried in pits.54 The high number of votives is thought
to attest a spring that is no longer present on the site. Moreover, a statistical
study of the anatomical votives revealed a higher than average number of eyes.
Heads, including whole and half heads, limbs and hands were also common, but
genitalia (male and female) far less so. On this basis the excavators concluded
that the waters of this sanctuary were sought for the cure of particular ailments,
especially afflictions of the eyes, and that the proportions of votive types – hands
and feet – reflected the injuries most likely to afflict a farming community.
Anatomical votives have also been recovered from the sanctuary of Diana at
Nemi and other sanctuaries to Diana. Evidence for a bathing structure at Nemi
Santillo Frizell, ‘Curing the Flock’, 82; Coarelli, I Santuari, 99.
51
Glinister, ‘Reconsidering’, 11–12.

52
53
T.W. Potter and C. Wells, ‘A Republican Healing Sanctuary at Ponte di Nona Near
Rome and the Classical Tradition of Votive Medicine’, Journal of the British Archaeological
Association 138 (1985): 23–47. The pottery mixed in with the votives dates to the third and
second centuries BCE, but the pits were filled during the fifth century CE.
54
Potter and Wells. ‘A Republican Healing Sanctuary’, 23–5.
is suggested by two pieces of evidence. First, the remains of suspensurae found in

Oʹ, one of three rooms on the northwest of the large platform of the sanctuary;55
second, an inscription recovered separately that refers to an ‘old bathhouse’
(balneum vetus) and thus implies the existence of a later bathhouse.56 Magnesium-
bearing springs have been discovered nearby, but it is uncertain whether these
fed the baths.57 The architectural remains for the baths were tentatively dated to
the first century BCE by the excavator, Lucia Morpurgo, but the association of
the theatre and baths with the sanctuary is a controversial point.58 Inge Nielsen
follows Morpurgo in her conclusion that the theatre, which was relatively small,
was directly connected with the Sanctuary of Diana and was a cult theatre for
the performance of ritual drama.59 By contrast, Filippo Coarelli interpreted
the theatre and surrounding buildings, including the baths, as part of a private
villa belonging to Julius Caesar and to subsequent Julio-Claudian emperors.60
Since Diana had a long association with healing, especially war wounds and skin
diseases, it is a reasonable possibility that healing, either through physicians or
the (admittedly controversial) therapeutic waters in the baths, was a function of
the sanctuary at Nemi even as early as the Republican period. 61
South Italy
It has been argued that the many sanctuaries of Mefitis may also demonstrate
a connection between therapeutic waters and religious observance.62 Mefitis
was a divine personification of the Oscan word for the suffocating sulphurous
gas from volcanic emissions. Like Febris (fever) and Robigo (mildew), she was
a goddess to be placated, one whose ill effects were to be warded off.63 Her
sanctuaries, attested mostly by inscriptions and literary texts, were located in
55
L. Morpurgo, ‘Teatro ed altri edifici romani in contrada La Valle’, Notizie degli Scavi
d’Antichità n.s. 7 (1931): 237–305, at 297.
56
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 15.4190; Inge Nielsen, ‘For Pleasure and Leisure:
The Baths and the Theatre’, in Mette Moltesen (ed.), I Dianas Hellige Lund: Fund fra en
Helligdom i Nemi (1997), 187–90 at 188.
57
Morpurgo, ‘Teatro’, 297–8; C.M.C. Green, Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at
Aricia, (2007), 63–6.
58
Morpurgo, ‘Teatro’.
59
Morpurgo, ‘Teatro’, 302–3; Nielsen, ‘For Pleasure’, 189.
60
Coarelli, I Santuari, 181–3.
61
C.M.C. Green, Roman Religion, 235–55.
62
Ingrid Edlund-Berry, ‘Hot, Cold or Smelly: the Power of Sacred Water in Roman
Religion’, in Schultz and Harvey (eds), Religion in Republican Italy (2006), 162–80, at 175.
63
P. Poccetti, ‘Mefitis’, Annali del Seminario di Studi del Mondo Classico, Sezione
Linguistica 4 (1982): 237–60; Ivan Rainini, Il Santuario de Mefite in Valle d’Ansanto.
Archeologica 60 (1985).
South Italy and Sicily, but also around Latium and Rome and as far north as
Cremona.64 Excavations at temples in ancient Apulia at Val D’Ansanto and in
Lucania at Rossano di Vaglio have revealed architectural remains, ceramics and
several dedicatory inscriptions dating from the fourth century BCE to the first
century CE, which constitute the major body of evidence for the cult.65
The temple at Val D’Ansanto was located at the lacus Ampsanctus, a
lake famously described by Virgil and Pliny the Elder (among others) that
emitted a gas so toxic that inhalation was (and still can be) fatal.66 To date,
no archaeological or literary evidence indicates that bathing occurred in
sulphurous waters associated with Mefitis at this sanctuary. Ceramic material
recovered from the site includes a quantity of black-glaze ware (small cups,
plates, and skyphoi), unguentaria, and unpainted coarse ware for domestic use,
but no anatomical votives.67 Other votives recovered during the unpublished
excavations of 1953–54 were concentrated in a creek bed in the so-called
‘Vado Mortale’ (Death Valley).68 Not all sanctuaries to Mefitis were located at
sulphurous springs, however, and not all sulphurous springs are noxious. Thus
it is of interest that a spring lying to the northwest of the Rossano di Vaglio
sanctuary was redirected to fountains in an open, central court, where there
was a large altar.69 The architectural remains of the cult buildings do not permit
us to draw more specific conclusions about the role of water, but it has been
suggested that there was a healing cult utilizing the sulphurous waters associated
with Mefitis both here and at other sites.70 The votives from Rossano di Vaglio
include a few fragmentary draped bronze figurines, but mostly comprise objects
with a military theme (greaves, belts, helmets, spear tips, a model war chariot
and horse).71 These votives do not demonstrate an association with healing as
explicitly as anatomical votives, but it is not out of the question that soldiers
frequented this sanctuary just as they did those of Apollo Grannus in Aachen
and the Aquae Helveticae at Baden. A number of inscriptions recovered from
this site reinforce the idea that Mefitis was a chthonic deity, that her tutelary
Edlund-Berry, ‘Hot, Cold or Smelly’, 176, n. 94–5.

64
Dinu Adamesteanu and Michel Lejeune, ‘Il Santuario Lucano di Macchia di

65
Rossano di Vaglio’, Atti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di scienze Morali, Storiche
e Filologiche 16 (1971): 39–83; Michel Lejeune, Méfitis d’après les dédicaces lucaniennes de
Rossano di Vaglio (1990).
66
Pliny H.N. 2.95 referred both to the temple of Mefitis and to the place fatal to all
who entered it. See also Virgil Aen. 7.563–7.
67
Rainini, Il Santuario.
68
Rainini, Il Santuario, 8–9.
69
Adamesteanu and Lejueune, ‘Il Santuario’, 45–6.
70
Cerchiai, ‘Acque’; Edlund-Berry, ‘Healing’, 176–8; Edlund-Berry, ‘Hot, Cold or
Smelly’, 87.
71
Adamesteanu and Lejeune, ‘Il Santuario’, 44–5.
associations extended to flocks and springs as well as sulphurous waters and that
she was sometimes associated with other deities, especially Jupiter and Ceres,
but also Venus, Mars and Juno Lucina.72
Conclusion
Ancient authors, physical remains and votive dedications at sites with thermo-
mineral waters reveal an older and quite different experience of taking the waters
in Italy. Archaeological evidence in the form of anatomical and other votives and
(sometimes) architectural remains bears out the connection between healing by
hydrotherapy and thank-offerings to the god. On-going investigation, whether
by survey or excavation, will continue to reveal sanctuaries and votives, and
may confirm that hydrotherapy and religious acts occurred much more widely
than currently appears to be the case. While the two seminal works on bathing
in Antiquity by Inge Nielsen and Fikret Yegül devote only a few paragraphs
to religious activity connected with Roman bathing in the imperial period,
subsequent studies of dedications from bathhouses indicate that ritual acts
sometimes occurred in this context.73 This evidence is admittedly sparse and is
concentrated mainly in Gaul, where the deities connected to therapeutic springs
were venerated long before the Roman period. Even so, it is sufficient to suggest
that statues of deities in baths were not necessarily devoid of religious meaning,
even if they were not the objects of regular veneration. The discussion herein
has offered an overview of votive activity and architectural remains at natural
sources of thermo-mineral waters among certain pre-Roman peoples of Italy.
That it is not an exhaustive list of sites demonstrates that the discussion of
religious activity connected with healing and bathing must occur within wider
chronological, geographical and cultural parameters. The use of therapeutic
springs is best attested in the fourth–first centuries BCE, when anatomical
votives were most common, but many other types of votives datable to earlier
and later periods have been found at several other sites. The Campi Phlegraei
around the Bay of Naples are usually regarded as the birthplace of the Roman
bathing habit, but the evidence emerging from sites north of Rome should
not be overlooked. The common thread among many of these sites is Etruscan
presence, but in the Po River valley it is possible that what is evident in the fifth
century BCE is a continuation of older Celtic or Venetic practices. If the Roman
habit of bathing appears to lack religious intent, it may only be because the water
72
Adamesteanu and Lejeune, ‘Il Santuario’, 81–3; Lejeune, Méfitis, 56–63; F. Coarelli,
‘Il Culto di Mefitis in Campania e à Roma’, I Culti della Campania antica: Atti del Convegno
internazionale di Studi in Ricordo di Nazarena Valenza Mele (1995): 185–90.
73
Nielsen, Thermae et Balnea; Yegül, Baths.
was piped in. Statues of the gods added to the general ambience of luxury. Even
if they were not regularly worshipped, the body of evidence from around Italy
suggests that their presence is far from accidental and alludes to a more complex
and much older synthesis of healing, bathing and religious devotion.
Chapter 12
Bathing the Infirm: Water Basins in Roman
Iconography and Household Contexts
Ria Berg
Introduction
Ablutions were, in Roman Antiquity, important gestures of domestic caring for

infirm household members. Performed on occasions of birth, illness and death,
they were not only simple hygienic practices and medical remedies, but also
deeply symbolic gestures of caring and curing. Ablutions, in images and rituals,
symbolize the family unit taking care of its members also in their infirm states,
as newborn infants, as sick and as dying. In order to perform ablutions, quite
simple instruments were needed, the most important of them being the basin.
As a domestic utensil the basin can thus be considered a carrier of multiple
meanings connected with the cycles of familial infirmity. This chapter aims at
setting this artefact type, the basin, in its social context of caring for the infirm
in the Roman households of the first centuries of our era, and at examining
ablutions as practical and symbolic gestures, moving between archaeological
typologies, iconography and cultural history.
Two major datasets will be examined: on one hand, representations of water
basins in everyday life scenes of Roman sarcophagus reliefs and, on the other,
Roman bronze basins as archaeological finds. The first set consists primarily of a
series of birth and death scenes in Roman curriculum vitae sarcophagi dated to
c. 100–300 CE, and the second of vessels buried by Vesuvius’ eruption, used in
Pompeian houses in 79 CE. The choice of these two datasets is due to the fact
that very few scenes of familial ablutions appear in first-century CE iconography,
and no later Imperial Age archaeological site preserves such rich patterns of
distributions of everyday utensils as Pompeii.
Water basins would not be the only possible material indicators of domestic
health care activities. Others would include, for example, containers for
medicines, probes and tweezers. All of these objects are notably multifunctional.1
1
See Emilie Riha, Römisches Toilettegerät und medizinische Instrumente aus Augst und
Kaiseraugst, Forschungen in Augst (1986); Lawrence J. Bliquez, Roman Surgical Instruments
and Other Minor Objects in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (1994); Ria Berg,
Also the water basins would have been needed for any kind of domestic
ablution: washing hands and feet during banquets, female grooming and so on
and possibly also for other uses.2 However, unlike the unguentaria and pointed
instruments, the basin is an object frequently represented in Roman imagery,
making it also an iconic sign for acts of familial caring and curing.
The questions I will pose are: what information can the images give us about
the use of basins at the bedsides of the infirm in Roman homes? Can the depicted
vessel types be identified with vases found in Pompeii? Can we investigate
further the social significance and symbolism of such vessels by comparing these
two kinds of evidence?
Images of Basins at Bedsides
Moments of domestic health care, including ablutions, are not commonly

represented in Roman iconography. Exceptionally, they do appear in a number
of relatively late biographical sarcophagi, which show the culminating scenes of
the life-cycle of the deceased in a few images, starting from the bathing of the
newborn, and ending in death. In all the depicted scenes the deceased person,
eventually buried in the sarcophagus, is the centre of attention, surrounded by
family members and domestic servants.3 Such biographical reliefs are collected
in the comprehensive volume of Rita Amedick (1991) on representations of
private life in Roman sarcophagi. Water basins appear in 13 of these sarcophagi
(Table 12.1).4
Of these 13 sarcophagi, the majority, 11, show the basin in the first bath scene.
In these scenes the newborn is often shown in front of the seated mother, in the
arms of a nurse, partially immerged in the basin. In the Torlonia sarcophagus,
found along Via Portuense, and dated to c. AD 200, the basin and the image of
the seated mother is repeated, in both the first bath and death scenes, so as to
underline the connection and continuity between these moments.5
‘Il mundus muliebris nelle fonti latini e nei contesti pompeiani’. PhD diss., University of
Helsinki, 2010.
2
Ria Berg, ‘Lo specchio di Venere. Mundus muliebris nella pittura pompeiana’, in Atti
del X congresso internazionale, Association Internationale pour la Peinture Murale Antique,
2007, ed. Irene Bragantini (2010), 289–300.
3
Natalie Kampen, ‘Biographical Narration and Roman Funerary Art’, AJA 85 (1981):
47–58, at p. 50; A. Hermann, ‘Das erste bad des Heilands und des Helden’, Jahrbuch für
Antike und Christentum 10 (1967): 64–78.
4
Rita Amedick, Vita privata. Die Sarkophage mit Darstellungen aus dem Menschenleben,
Die Antiken Sarkophagreliefs, Vol. 1,4 (1991).
5
Inv. 414. Amedick, Vita privata, 154, cat. 198, Taf. 54, 1–3; 55, 3–4; Kampen,
‘Biographical Narration’, 53–4, pl. 8, Figure 7.
Figure 12.1 First bath and death scenes in the Torlonia sarcophagus, Museo Torlonia, Rome, inv. 414. Photo: ICCD E36823,
reproduced by permission of the MiBACT
Sometimes a second nurse, equipped with a towel, is standing at the side

of the basin, ready to hold the infant (in the sarcophagi of Agrigento, Vatican,
Los Angeles, Poggio a Caiano and Tivoli), or, more rarely, a nurse with a jug
is adding water (Museo Nazionale, inv. 125605). In one exceptional scene, in
a fragmentary sarcophagus found in Ostia, the moment immediately after the
bath is shown, and the mother is not present at all: two maids hold the infant,
already wrapped in a towel, over the basin.6

Mythological parallels and earlier models for this group can be seen in the
images that represent the birth and the first bath of Dionysus, in which the
presence of a well visible basin is a constant feature. In the Dionysiac images,
however, the iconographic conventions are slightly different, showing in most
cases the moment immediately before the bath, not the bath itself.7 For example,
in a Dionysiac sarcophagus in the Musei Capitolini, the infant is still in the lap
of a seated nymph, while another is preparing the bath by pouring water from
a jug to a basin placed on the floor.8 A specific group is formed by birth scenes
in which Semele is lying on a bed, under which a basin is set. One such scene,
a now-lost painting from the Baths of Titus, is an important prototype for the
later depictions of the familial first bath scenes on sarcophagi. Here, in front
of Semele’s bed, a crouching assistant holds the infant above a rounded metal
basin set on the ground, and at her side a high metal amphora, undoubtedly for
carrying water, is placed on the floor.9
Amedick, Vita privata, 139, cat. 107, Taf. 57, 3; Kampen, ‘Biographical Narration’,
6
54, pl. 10, Figures 16–17.

7
An exceptional image showing the infant god being bathed in a wide tub with flanged
rim can be seen in the relief of a silver skyphus in the House of the Menander silver treasure,
see Carlo Gasparri, s.v. ‘Bacchus’, in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae = LIMC
(1992), III, 1, 540–66, at 552, cat. 156; III, 2, 442.
8
Kampen, ‘Biographical Narration’, 50, pl. 8, Figure 6; Paul Zanker and Björn C. Ewald,
Mit mythen leben. Die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage (2004), 91, 200. For parallels, see
F. Matz, Die dionysischen Sarkophage (1969), Vol. III, 343–5. See, for example the sarcophagus
depicting Dionysus’ bath, in München Glyptothek (204), datable to 140 CE (Matz, Die
dionysischen Sarkophage, 353–4, cat. 201, Taf. 89; Zanker and Ewald, Mythen, 147, Figure 130;
Gasparri, ‘Bacchus’, 552, cat. 154, III, 2, 442). Another example is a sarcophagus fragment in
Woburn Abbey, Matz, Die dionysischen Sarkophage, 356, cat. 202, Taf. 212, where the bath is
being prepared in a decorated basin on high foot, with two high handles.
9
This is the earliest example of the ‘death of Semele’ cycle of pictures, preserved in the
engraving of Giovanni Mirri, in Giuseppe Carletti et al., Vestigia delle Terme di Tito e loro
interne pitture (1776); Ch. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et
romaines : d’après les textes et les monuments, s.v. ‘alveus’, Vol. 1, pt. I, 219, Figure 241; Matz,
Die dionysischen Sarkophage, 345, Beilage 88, 1; Gasparri, ‘Bacchus’, 550, cat. 127 with bibl.
Other depictions of Selene lying on the bed, with a basin under it, can be seen on a sarcophagus
lid, dated to 170/180 CE at Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, see Gasparri, ‘Bacchus’, 721, cat.
10 c, III, 2, 531 and another sarcophagus from Via Praenestina and Zagreb, LIMC, III, 1,
Bathing the Infirm 205
Figure 12.2 The first bath of Dionysus, wall painting from the Baths of Titus,
Rome. Drawing: Giovanni Mirri, in Giuseppe Carletti et al.,
Vestigia delle Terme di Tito e loro interne pitture (1776)
In the Roman household, the bathing of the newborn was an important

practical, social and ritual event that meant not only material and cultural
cleaning, but also the starting point of the process of becoming a member of
the family.10 The bath would have taken place immediately after birth, and
721, cat. 10 d–11; III, 2, 531; and a relief in Ince Blundel Hall, where the basin is set on a
rectangular base under the bed, Matz, Die dionysischen Sarkophage, 345, Beilage 88, 2. See
also the relief on an ivory pyxis in the Museo Archeologico Civico of Bologna, from the
fifth century CE, with Semele lying on the bed, under which a large shell-shaped basin is
shown (Gasparri, ‘Bacchus’, cat. 130, 551; Anneliese Kossatz-Deissmann, s.v. ‘Semele’, LIMC
(1991), 16, 723).
10
Thomas Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, Zetemata 87 (1990); Mireille Corbier,
‘Child exposure and abandonment’, in Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World, ed.
Suzanne Dixon (2001), 52–73; Marja-Leena Hänninen, ‘From womb to family. Rituals
and social conventions connected to Roman birth’, in Hoping for Continuity: Childhood,
Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds Katariina Mustakallio, Jussi
Hanska, Hanna-Leena Sainio and Ville Vuolanto (2005), 49–60, at 55; Véronique Dasen,
‘Le pouvoir des femmes: des Parques aux matres’, in Des fata aux fees. Regards croisés de
l’Antiquité à nos jours, eds Martine Hennard Dutheil and Véronique Dasen (2011), 115–46.
was probably connected with the inspection made by the midwife, to examine
whether the baby was fit to be reared.11 However, the visual representations of
the bath are only partially realistic: the mother is already dressed and seated,
and the baby is represented as clearly older than a newborn.12 Thus, the image of
the bath encapsulates multi-layered meanings, from the birth itself, to the social
birth in the family and the starting point of a destined future.
In death or prothesis scenes, basins appear more rarely, never in use, but set
under the bed of the dying. Such basins are visible in four scenes of the sarcophagi
of this group (Torlonia, Louvre, Stuttgart, Museo Nazionale Romano, inv. 535).13
This basin might be interpreted either as a container for water connected with
medical operations prior to death, or for water needed in the ritual ablution of
the corpse.14 Mythological parallels can be found in sarcophagi representing the
Achilles cycle, where the latter meaning, washing the corpse, is clearly intended.
For example, in the so-called Pianabella sarcophagus, the death of Patroclus is
depicted as an extended scene of Achilles’ mourning: here, next to the death
bed, a basin is set on the ground, and a male figure pours water into it from a
jug. On the upper register, the death of Hector is shown; the hero is lying on
the battleground while a woman comes towards him with a large basin in her
hands.15 The above-mentioned scenes of Semele lying on the bed can also be
included in this group – the birth of Dionysus coinciding with her own death –
Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, 1–92.

11
As described by Soranus, the first bath would have included not only cleansing with
12
warm water, and applications of powders and oils, as discussed by Valerie French, ‘Midwives
and maternity care in the Roman world’, in Rescuing Creusa. New Methodological Approaches
to Women in Antiquity, Helios, 13,2, ed. Marilyn B. Skinner (1986), 69–84. Another
unrealistic element is the reading of astrological signs above the bathing scene, for example,
in the sarcophagus of Agrigento, Amedick, Vita privata, cat. 2, 121, Taf. 53, 1–3; Francesca
Valbruzzi, ‘Un sarcofago di bambino rinvenuto ad Agrigento’, in Grabeskunst der römischen
Kaiserzeit, ed. Guntram Koch (1939), 155–8 and Zanker and Ewald, Mythen, 66–7. Figures
47 and 48, and Villa Doria Pamphili (Kampen, ‘Biographical Narration’, 54, pl. 9, Figure 14).
13
For the death-bed scene on the Museo Nazionale sarcophagus, and its interpretation,
see Amedick, Vita privata, cat. 177; Janet Huskinson, ‘Disappearing children? Children in
Roman Funerary art of the first to the fourth century AD’, in Hoping for Continuity, 91–103,
at 99.
14
For the ritual washing, see Darja Šterbenc Erker, ‘Gender and Roman funerary
ritual’, in Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death, eds Valerie M. Hope and Janet
Huskinson (2011), 40–60, at 47.
15
Ostia museum, inv. no. 43504, Zanker and Ewald, Mythen, 69, 283–5, Figure 50.
A similar scene, with Achilles’ prothesis and a side figure pouring water from a jug to a basin
standing on the floor on three lion paw feet, can be seen, for example, in an earlier example,
in Sabine Rogge, ‘Tektonik und Ornamentik attischer Sarkophage’, in Grabeskunst der
römischen Kaiserzeit, ed. Guntram Koch (1993), 111–32, Taf. 48, 2.
Figure 12.3 Prothesis scene with basin, footstool and slippers under the bed. Sarcophagus found in Rome, Museum of Louvre,
Paris, inv. Ma 318. Author’s drawing
when the infant is omitted from the scene and a water basin set under the bed.16
These mythological parallels could imply that the basin’s function is the ablution
of the dead body.
Yet, in the life-cycle sarcophagi, a medical function of the basin under the
bed could also be intended. This is suggested by the fact that besides the basin,
other objects used and owned by the deceased in life, in particular footstools,
slippers, pet dogs, birds and so on are also placed under the bed, like in the
Louvre sarcophagus.17
The association with this group of objects, as a memento of past life, could
be confirmed by similar sets of objects often placed under beds in erotic
scenes.18 Greek and Roman medical writers did, in their prescriptions, often
resort to water, for partial baths or fomentations, and a water basin would
certainly have been needed at the bedside.19 Bronze bowls could actually be
part of a Roman doctor’s instrumentarium.20 It is, however, improbable that
the visiting doctor would normally have brought the necessary basin with
him/her; it is more likely that the basin was part of the permanent household
equipment. There are also iconographic representations of doctors treating
their patients with a water basin on the ground. In mythological context, such
images include depictions of a wounded Adonis being medicated by cupids
over a basin on the ground.21 The visual clues about the nature of the ablution
in the scenes around the death-bed are thus contradictory, and perhaps
voluntarily ambiguous – the same basin could in fact have served for ablutions
both during the illness, and after death.
16
For an example of the above mentioned sarcophagus, datable to second–third
century CE, from Zagreb, now at Minturno, showing Semele lying on bed, under which can
be seen a large basin on conical foot, and a jug, see Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Semele’, 718–26, at
721, cat. 11; VII, 2, 531; Matz, Die dionysischen Sarkophage, n. 24.
17
Kampen, ‘Biographical Narration’, 54, pl. 10, Figure 15.
18
For erotic scenes, see, for example, John R. Clarke, Looking at lovemaking.
Constructions of sexuality in Roman art 100 B.C.–A.D. 250 (1998), 168, Figure 60, 233,
Figure 94.
19
Danielle Gourevich, ‘La cuisine du corps feminine: L’eau dans le livre III du traité
gynécologique de Soranos d’Éphèse’, in L’eau, la santé et la maladie dans le mond Grec,
eds René Ginouvès, Anne-Marie Guimier-Sorbets, Jacques Jouanna and Laurence Villard
(1994), 95–107, at 95, and René Ginouvès, Balaneutikè. Recherches sur le bain dans antiquité
grecque (1962).
20
For example in the doctor’s grave from Bingen, where 70 medical instruments
were set in a large circular bronze basin, see Hartmut Matthäus, Der Arzt in römischer Zeit.
Medizinische Instrumente und Arzneien (1987), 11–12, Abb. 2.
21
For example, in Mantua, Palazzo Ducale, datable to c. 190 CE, see Zanker and
Ewald, Mythen, 179, Figures 162, 188 and another in Vatican Museums, datable to 220 CE,
see ibid., 210, Figure 189.
Two sarcophagi have, in particular, caught my attention, because the

basin appears in their relief twice: first in the scene of birth, and then in the
scene of death. One of these, the Museo Torlonia sarcophagus, has already
been mentioned above. Here the basin is first seen in the bathing scene of the
newborn, and then again under the bed of the dying adult man. In both scenes,
the basin (sub-hemispherical, with thickened lip, no handles) is identical, and
is quite possibly the same one. The other relief that shows the basin twice is the
sarcophagus now in Stuttgart, dated to c. 220 CE.22 Here, the birth scene at the
side of the sarcophagus shows the infant held up by two nurses. In the main
scene, on the front of the sarcophagus, the dying child is seen on the bed, with a
similar basin under the bed.
The duplication of the basin seems to underline the importance of this
particular vessel and the gestures of its use – perhaps signifying cyclical continuity
in domestic caring at its initial and terminal points. Possibly, they emphasize this
material object as a visual marker of domestic caring as a ritual act.
Among the general observations to be made on the basis of this material,
there is one consistent detail: the basin is always set on the floor. This may be
a gesture full of meaning; not all water basins in Roman iconography are set
on the ground. This becomes clear if we compare depictions of basins in the
palaestra, in baths or in garden or temple settings set on a high foot, to bring it
to a practical height to immerge the hands and/or face.23 In many pre-modern
societies, such washing basins were normally set on a bedroom table, to raise
them to a reasonable operative level, not on the ground. In fact, the placing
on floor seems to contradict practicality, with, in the birth scenes, the nurses
depicted very uncomfortably kneeling down on the floor for the operation
of washing.
Could the ground contact of the basin, then, have had a specific meaning
in the life-cycle scenes? Certainly earth had a symbolic status in both birth and
death rituals – a reference could be made, for example, to Varro’s statement that
earth unifies the unborn and the dead.24 Among others, Darja Šterbenc Erker
and Anthony Corbeill comment on the similarity between the ritual of putting
the dead on the ground, and its opposite gesture, lifting the newborn from
the ground.25 The marked upward movement of the infant could, as noted by
22
Amedick, Vita privata, 161, cat. 248, Taf. 72,1; 73,1; 74,1–2.
23
Ginouvès, Balaneutikè. For images of basins (lacus, luter) in Pompeian wall paintings,
see Anna Elisabeth Riz, Bronzegefässe in der römisch-pompeianischen Wandmalerei (1990),
14, 18, 29, 38–9, Taf. 51–4.
24
Varro, ling. 5.64; de vita populi romani, frg. 81. See Hänninen, ‘From womb to family’,
55, 57.
25
Šterbenc Erker, ‘Gender’, 46. Antony Corbeill, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient
Rome (2004), 89–106, underlines the similarities in the ritual gestures of birth and death,
and the role of women as ‘midwives to the dead’.
Courbier, indicate the ritual lifting of the child from the ground.26 Could the
water basin, on the floor, also have contained a reference to the underworld?
Going one step further, I would suggest that the actual ground contact after
birth might have been obtained through the water basin, in the act of bathing,
not by placing the infant directly on the floor. This allusion might also explain
why baby Dionysus is depicted in a different moment of bathing – as he was of
divine origin, no inspection and acceptance to the household by lifting him up

from the basin was needed.
Another possible explanation for the placing of the basin on the ground,
rather than elevating it up on a podium or table, would be the visual
manifestation of the contaminated status of this water. Hypothetically, the
liminal status of such ablutions and the contamination with actual dirt, blood
and so on could have denoted the water, and by extension, its container, as dirty.
It would thus be visibly distinguished from the pure and elevated status of the
water basins in shrines and in baths. This interrogative makes us pose a quite
practical question: in a household, was there a separate ceremonial basin for
such ‘polluted’ operations? Or could the same basin actually have been used for
washing the dead, and the banquet ablutions and everyday washing? If so, such a
basin could potentially have had a very important symbolic status among all the
vessels owned by the household.
Water Basins as Artefacts
Pompeian houses, with their relatively complete household inventories from

79 CE eruption level, suggest that similar large bronze basins were present in
most houses. However, the connection between basins represented and basins
as archaeological artefacts is not straightforward, nor are their forms quite
identical. I will, first, start with an overview of the formal characteristics of the
basins depicted on the life-cycle sarcophagi collected by Amedick.
Three images differ from others because in them bathtubs, rather than
portable basins, are depicted: they are large, straight-walled, flat-based and
possibly oval in form. One such tub is clearly visible in one of the earliest life-
cycle sarcophagi (c. 100 CE), found in Via Portuense and now in the Museo
Nazionale Romano, depicting the first bath quite realistically, including the lying
position of the infant; others are the Poggio a Caiano and Tivoli sarcophagi.27
Normally described as placing the child on the ground and lifting it up, Hänninen,
26
‘From womb to family’, 55; Courbier, n. 55, 54; Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, 2–3;
90–92 et passim. Cf. Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, 1–92; see also Dasen, Pouvoir des
femmes.
27
Museo Nazionale Romano (inv. 125605, Amedick, Vita privata, 150, cat. *178,
Taf. 60,1; Kampen, ‘Biographical Narration’, 47–8, Pl. 7, Figures 4–5); Poggio a Caiano, of
In the case of these tubs, their placing on the ground does not need any further
symbolic motivation besides their sheer weight and measure. However, such
tubs are extremely rare in archaeological contexts.
The most common type of basin depicted on sarcophagi is circular, sub-
hemispherical, low and clearly portable. The precise recognition of the vessel
types represented is not easy, not least because of the extreme stylistic reduction:
small morphological features of the vases, such as handles, feet and decoration,
might even have been omitted. In fact, they present very different combinations
of various elements. Five of the depicted basins have a low foot – the rest seem
to rest directly on the floor. Eight have a thickened, flanged or out-turned rim.
Only three basins are depicted with handles (Louvre, Ostia and Chiaramonti
sarcophagi) and can thus be directly identified with Roman circular bronze
basins, which were always equipped with two handles. The most typical vessel
seen in the reliefs is a circular vessel with no handles, with a pronounced lip,
mostly without a foot. However, exactly such a vessel is practically absent
from the bronze repertoire of the Roman Imperial era. Rather, the closest
morphological parallels would be with the terracotta mortaria (called pelves
in earlier archaeological terminology), low circular basins without a foot or
handles, and with a wide out-turned lip. However, these vessels were certainly
primarily used for culinary preparations, as proven by signs of use and their
combination with pestles.28
Moreover, looking at the earlier parallels of these images – the more
elaborate, mythological scenes, like the birth of Dionysus, in paintings and
mosaics – the golden colour and high reflections of the vases depicted make
it clear that these were metal vases. Considering the Greek derivation of these
early scenes, the rounded basin without handles and base might derive from the
lébes, a large metal cauldron with a rounded body and bottom and out-turned
lip. Most importantly, it also shared a similar ritual function: a lébes (gamikos)
was used in ablutions connected with nuptial and funerary ceremonies.29 Thus,
the iconographical representations of basins seem to combine allusions to a
mythological past with contemporaneous elements.
Further information for the identification of these basins might come
from literary sources. In fact, two late literary passages mention among vessels
in which infants were bathed pelvis and labellum. However, these terms seem
late Antonine date (Amedick, Vita privata, 142, cat. 123, Taf. 62,4); Tivoli, preserved only
through a drawing, also shows a large tub with straight walls, inside of which the child can be
seated (Amedick, Vita privata, cat. 250, Taf. 62,6). Cf. the tub on the silver skyphus from the
House of the Menander (Matz, Die dionysischen Sarkophage, 345; Gasparri, ‘Bacchus’, III, 1,
552, cat. 156; III, 2, 442).
28
Allison, Menander, 21.
29
For lébes, see Ginouvès, Balaneutikè, 57–60, for other vessels for ablutions in classical
Greek culture, 70–75; birth (235–8), nuptial (265–82), funerary (242–4).
to have been used rather generally of all large, open basins – albeit pelvis is
sometimes explained as a basin for washing the feet. In the usage of names, as in
pictorial representations, the general form and function probably overruled the
minor formal differences.30
Let us now have a closer look at the Pompeian basins. Among the types
of vessels found in 79 CE house floor contexts, there are a number of open
bronze basins with a large diameter (30–40 centimetres), suitable for

ablutions. Suzanne Tassinari, in her comprehensive publication on bronze
vessels in the archaeological storerooms of Pompeii (1993), has divided the
basins into three major categories, S (circular basins), P (bread-basket type)
and T (elliptical vases).31 The elliptical basins T, undecorated and strictly
utilitarian, bear some resemblance to the larger oval tubs on the sarcophagi,
and might in fact be the vessel depicted in the two cases discussed above
among the ‘bathtubs’ (Tivoli and Doria Pamphili sarcophagi). They have
straight walls, a wide horizontal lip and were surely meant to be placed on
(uneven) floor, as attested by four small feet. However, this type is relatively
rare, present in only 37 examples (whole and fragmentary) of Pompeii
deposits, and could thus not have been a universally indispensable object.32
The third basin, the so-called bread basket basin type P, has oval form with
high mobile handles and abundant decorations, and presumably was used in
ablutions during banquets.33
Vopiscus (SHA Aurelius 4.4) mentions the bathing of a child in pelvis. Isidore
30
(20.6.8) connects labrum with washing infants (labrum vocatum eo quod in eo labationem
fieri solitum est infantium, diminutivum labellum. Idem et albeum, quod in eo ablutionem fieri
solitum). The word labellum has also been used for a vessel for funerary baths, Cic. de leg. 2,
66; Ginouvès, Balaneutikè, 252. The comparison between names of containers mentioned in
Latin literary passages and forms of vessels has been made in particular by Werner Hilgers,
in Lateinische Gefassnamen. Bezeichnungen, Funktion und Form römischer Gefässe nach den
antiken Schriftquellen (1969), discussing basins for ablutions, in general (16), aqualis (107);
concha (50, 151–2), labellum/labrum (199–200), lacus (201–2), luter (215–16), pelvis
(73–4, 248–9), pyelus (265), and solium (283–4). See also K.D. White, Farm Equipment
of the Roman World (1975) alveus (119–22), labrum (154–6), lacus (157–60) and pelvis
(183–5); and Penelope Allison, in Menander, labrum (19–20), lebes (20), pelvis (22).
31
S. Tassinari, Il vasellame bronzeo di Pompei (1993).
32
Category T: Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, 98; II, 241–9. The vessel is provided with a
cover, and the smaller versions may have served as chamber pots. See A. Wilson, ‘Urination
and defecation Roman style’, in: Roman Toilets. Their Archaeology and History, ed. by
G.C.M. Jansen and E.M. Moormann, BaBesch Supplement 19 (2011), 95.
33
Category P: Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, 85–6; II, pp. 181–95. For these so-called
‘vasi a paniere’, breadbaskets, see Fiorenza Proto, ‘I vasi a paniere: la categoria P’, in Vasi in
bronzo. Brocche, askoi, vasi a paniere (2009), 94–140; for various hypotheses on their use, see
especially 111–13.
Finally, the circular basin of category S, the most common of the three (144
examples in Pompeii), is the vessel most similar to the ones depicted on the
sarcophagi. The function of this type of basin has been defined by both Tassinari
and Margherita Bolla as domestic ablutions.34
Basin S has five subtypes (S1000–S5000), all of which share the general low,
rounded shape, and all of which are provided with two handles, and a foot of
varying form:
1. S1000 is a large basin resting on three feet (12 examples).35 In sarcophagus

images, no tripod vases are represented.
2. S2000 has a high conical foot, two horizontal handles (often decorated
with images of hands), and an out-turned lip (16 examples in Pompeii).
Its general form corresponds well with the depictions of vases with an
offset lip and a conical base.36
3. S3000 has a low ring foot and two lateral handles rising above the rim,
with vegetal decoration (18 examples in Pompeii). The Chiaramonti
sarcophagus basin, with high handles, possibly belongs to this type. The
Bingen doctor’s grave contains a bronze bowl of this form.37
4. S4000 has a low ring foot and lateral handles at the level of the rim, with a
non-distinct lip. The handles are mostly decorated with snake heads. This
type of basin is the most numerous of the category S, with 51 examples
in Pompeii. Louvre and Ostia sarcophagus basins, with handles, can
be directly ascribed to this type, but the general form is similar to the
depicted vases without an offset lip.38
5. S5000 consists of larger basins with an elliptical mouth, with only one
example present in Pompeii, and S6000 consists of ‘varia’.39
In conclusion, the subtypes S2000, S3000 and S4000 of basin S are

morphologically the most similar to the basins in iconography. Basins of
category T may also appear in some images.
How many such large bronze basins were there, on average, per Pompeian
household? Even if in Pompeii, the major interest has been centred on the
34
Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, category S: I, 90–97, II, 200–240; for their use and
coincidence with other forms, I, 232. M. Bolla, ‘Les bassins. I bacili con attacchi a foglie
di vite’, in M. Feugére (ed.), La vaisselle tardo-républicaine en bronze. Actes de la table-ronde
CNRS organisèe à Lattes, 26–28 avril 1990 (1991), 113–20.
35
Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, p. 93; II, pp. 200–203.
36
S2000: Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, pp. 93–4; II, pp. 204–11.
37
S3000: Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, pp. 212–19; II, pp. 212–19. Matthäus, Abb. 2.
38
S4000: Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, 95–6; II, 220–38.
39
S5000-S6000: Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, 96; II, 239–40.
Figure 12.4 The most common forms of Pompeian large bronze basins: circular
types S2000, S3000, S4000 (with snake handle) and, below,
the elliptical basin T. Drawings by the author after Tassinari, Il
vasellame bronzeo di Pompei, II, 205 (inv. 3641), 215 (inv. 7066),
226 (inv. 7261), 245 (inv. 18684)
specialized medical instruments and the figure of the professional doctor,40 not
instruments of domestic health care,41 collecting information on basins with
known provenience,42 from the catalogue of Tassinari, we get the following
basic figures:
one basin: 50 houses43

40
See H. Eschebach, Die Arzthäuser in Pompeji (Antike Welt, Sondernummer 15),
Bliquez, Roman Surgical Instruments. Of course it is extremely difficult to draw a line
between professional and non-professional, domestic medical instrumentaria, see E. Künzl,
‘L. J. Bliquez und die medizinische Instrumente aus Pompeji: Die medizinische Versorgung
einer römischen Stadt im 1. Jh. N.Chr’, JRA 12 (1999): 575–92, at 587.
41
For private health care and ablutions, see Bernard Sigges Vita cognita (2001);
Penelope Allison, Pompeian Households. An Analysis of Material Culture (2004); idem., The
Insula of the Menander at Pompeii, Vol. III: The Finds, a contextual study (2006), 393–4;
Berg, Mundus muliebris.
42
Of course, we do not know if the house inventories are complete, and often they
are not, resulting from looting before, during and after the catastrophic event. Cf. Allison,
Pompeian Households; Berg, Mundus muliebris.
43
One basin (50 cases): I 6, 2.16 Casa del Criptoportico: S2122; I 6, 3 Bottega di Verus:
S4000 (hippocampi); I 6, 4 Casa del Sacello Iliaco: S4111a (snakes); I 6, 7 Fullonica di
Stephanus: S1130; I 6, 10 taberna: S4100 (snakes); I 8, 5.6 Casa della Statuetta Indiana: S; I
9, 3.4 Casa di Successus: S2200 (hands);I 9, 5 Casa dei Cubicoli floreali: S4322 (snakes); I 9,
9.10 Officina pigmentaria: S3110; I 7, 10 Casa del Fabbro: S4121 (snakes); I 10, 8 officina:
S4100 (dogs); I 11, 2 casa: S3110; I 11, 6 Casa della Venere in Bikini: S2122; I 11, 12 Casa
e caupona di Euxinus: S3200; I 11, 14 casa: S4111 (snakes); I 11, 16 Casa di Saturninus:
S3110; I 12, 1.2 Pistrinum di Sotericus: S6100; I 12, 7 Casa del Garum: S4122 (snakes); I
12, 9 casa: S4000 (griffins); I 13, 5 casa: S3100; I 13, 11 casa: S3110; I 13, 13 thermopolium:
S1300; I 13, 14 casa: S5000 (masks); I 14, 7 Casa del Larario del Sarno: S4111 (snakes); I 15,
5 casa: S2122; I 18, 2 casa: S3120; I 18, 5 casa: S2200; II 1, 11.12 officina: S4121 (swans); II
2, 4 Casa della Corona Civica: S2110; III 2, 1 Casa di Trebius Valens: S4121 (hands); III 2
thermopolium: S2121 (hands); III 4 Casa: S4100 (birds); III 4, 2 Casa di Arrius Crescens:
S4121 (dogs); III 4, 3 Casa di Moralista: S4112 (snakes); III 4, 4 Casa di ifigenia: S4111
(swans); IV 6, 28: S4000 (birds); V 3, 2 casa: S1300; V 3, 4 Casa della Soffitta: S3110; V
3, 6 Casa del Narciso: S; V 3, 7 Casa della Regina di Olanda: S4121 (hippocampi); V 3, 10
casa: S6200; V 4a Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto: S4121 (griphons); V 4, 3 Casa del Flamen:
S2121 (hands) + fragment of handle of S2100; V 4c casa: S4210 (birds); V 4 Thermopolium
di Spatalus: S1100; V 4, 9 Casa di Isis Fortuna: S (horses); VI 16, 7.38 Casa degli Amorini
dorati: S4121 (snakes); VI 16, 15 Casa dell’Ara massima: S3110; VI 16, 28 casa: S1110; VI
16, 39.40 thermopolium: S4121 (snakes). Two basins (6 cases): I 6, 11 Casa dei Quadretti
Teatrali: S4100 (dogs) + due frammenti di S2200; I 7, 11 Casa dell’Efebo: S2120/2200;
S 1220; I 8, 12 casa: S3110; S4111 (snakes); I 13, 2 Casa di Helvius Severus (Tassinari, Il
vasellame, I, 152–3: Casa di Lesbianus): S2230; S1130; I 13, 8 Casa di Lesbianus (Tassinari,
Il vasellame, I, 153: I 13, 9): S2210; S4112; I 14, 13 casa: S4000 (fragment); S3110.
Three basins (4 cases): I 8, 8.9 Caupona di Vetutius Placidus: S2200; S3110; S4321; I 14,
two basins: 6 houses

three basins: 4 houses
four basins: 1 house
five basins: 2 houses.
Remembering that the material does not include finds excavated prior to 1886,
that the proveniences include not only large domus, but also shops, thermopolia
and partially excavated houses and that houses were plundered before, during or
after Vesuvius’ eruption, caution is necessary and the statistics must necessarily
remain approximate; the results cannot be used as exact numerical data on the
distribution of basins in all Pompeian houses.44 The numbers can, however, be
used as a guideline to create a general picture of the diffusion of such vases in the
urban fabric of the city.
The figures are interesting in many ways. First and foremost, they clearly show
a general tendency to own only one such basin in every household. It is notable
that the rare houses with multiple basins tend not to be large elite houses, but a
significant number of them are bars, taverns and hospitia, where their use might
be connected with ablutions in banqueting and the hospitality trade. Having
several, possibly specialized, basins per household does not seem to be a typical
prerequisite of an elite domus. The tendency to own just one important basin per
domus can also be confirmed by looking at a selection of 30 Pompeian atrium
houses included in the database elaborated by Penelope Allison, accompanying
her volume on Pompeian households.45 The frequency with which the largest
habitations all have just one circular bronze basin of category S, mostly a S4000
decorated with snakes on the handles, is notable, and includes such wealthy
9 hospitium: S4322 (snakes); S2200; S6000; V 3, 11 casa: S4111 (snakes); S4322; S4111;
VI 15, 8.9: Casa del Principe di Napoli: S4400 (birds); S6000 (snakes); S (dolphins). Four
basins: I 4, 10 Casa di Menandro: S4121 (birds); S4210 (griffins); S2210; 2120 (hands). Five
basins (2 cases): I 8, 14 Casa di M. Epidius Primus: S4121 (snakes); S1110; S; S4322 (snakes);
S4121 (dogs); I 9, 2 casa: S4000 (snakes); S1120; S2220; S4121 (snakes); handle of S3110.
44
Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, p. 17.
45
Casa del Sacello Iliaco: basin S (snake handles); I 6, 8, none; Casa dei Quadretti
Teatrali: 2 basins S (snake handles); Casa di Stallius Eros: none; Casa dei Ceii, basin T; Casa
di Sacerdos Amandus: basin T, Casa dell’Efebo, basin S (tripod); I 7, 19, none; Casa del
Fabbro, 3 basins S (snake handles); Casa di A. Trebius Valens: basin S (snake handles); Casa
del Bicentenario: 2 basins; Casa delle Nozze d’Argento: basin S? and T; Casa di M. Lucretius
Fronto: basin S (snake handles); Casa dei Vettii: basin S (snake handles); VI 15, 5: basin T,
shell shaped basin; Casa del Principe di Napoli: 2 basins S and basin T; Casa degli Amorini
dorati: basin S (snake handles); Casa dell’Ara Massima, basin S (snake handles), basin T; VI
16, 26, none; VIII 2, 14–16: basin; VIII 2, 26, basin; VIII 2, 28, none; VIII 2, 29–30, none;
VIII 2, 34, none; Casa di Giuseppe II, shell shaped basin; Casa di Giulio Polibio: basin S
(snake handles).
habitations as Casa del Sacello Iliaco, A. Trebius Valens, M. Lucretius Fronto,

Vettii, Amorini Dorati, Ara Massima and Iulius Polybius.
There are also several houses with no large bronze container. In fact, using
the evidence gathered by Allison on the Insula of the Menander, we can confirm
that not all houses in this insula had bronze basins. In Table 12.2, all vessels
found in the insula with a diameter superior to 25 cm have been listed.46 The
distribution of basins is, in fact, rather uneven. Not all houses had a bronze basin,
while the wealthiest house, that of the Menander, had several, and also one in
silver. Some houses did not have any large vessels other than several terracotta
mortaria – we might presume some of these were used also as washing basins.47
It is, at the moment, impossible to say whether we should assume the use of
wooden buckets for the houses without basins, or deduce that their household
inventories were not complete.
The basin tends to be the largest and most decorated item of the bronzes
owned by a household, and it should thus have had a place of honour among
its possessions. Further considerations could be attempted on the basis of the
decoration of the basin S (on the sarcophagi, no decoration is visible). The
meaning of the decoration on bronze vases – whether it is symbolic or merely
decorative – has been widely debated.48 Yet decoration does not appear randomly
on different forms. For example, the representative basin P tends to have handles
decorated with aquatic birds and dogs. On the handles of basin S, the decoration
chosen for the handle attachments can be either in the form of two hands, that
seem to lift up the basin (S1000), or floral forms (S2000), snakes or, more rarely,
gryphons and birds (S4000). The floral elements can be dismissed as too generic
for interpretation, but hands and snakes are quite rare on other bronze vases,
and might have a symbolic connotation with the use of the vases. Hands could
refer to the act of carrying as a servile task, or could even be an allusion to the
function of the vase in caring and curing activities. Snakes do not seem to be an
obvious choice to decorate water basins – rather more obvious would have been
dolphins or other marine creatures, or indeed aquatic birds.
Why, then, the snake? Returning to the discourse on the gestures of use of
these vessels as depicted on sarcophagi, we might suspect that a connection with
the earth and the underworld might have been intended. It could be suggested
that the water basin – as is now seen, a unique and singular item among the
household possessions – could even have been a symbolic entity, as was the
fireplace. Thus, the decorations in the form of snakes would have recalled the
habitual decorations of the household fireplaces, guarded by a lararium’s snake-
formed geniuses. If this was indeed the representative vase that would have been
46
Allison, Menander, pp. 439, 445.
47
See Allison, Pompeian Households, 136–9 and Menander, 398–4.
48
Tassinari, Il vasellame, I, 216–18.
used in cases of birth and death, the choice of snakes on the handles might not
be purely decorative, but functional as an apotropaic element, alluding to snakes
as generative powers of the ancestral line.
Of course, it cannot be excluded that the choice of snakes and gryphons
might have been only apotropaic in a more general sense. All ablutions meant at
least partial denudation of the body, being thus temporary moments of weakness
and vulnerability. Obviously also in the major life-cycle events, like birth, illness
and death, divine and magical protection was needed.
As in birth and death, water was also present in nuptial rituals, even though,
as commented by Karen K. Hersch, no ancient source mentions what exactly
was done with the water, nor what kind of container it was kept in.49 Some late
sources seem to confirm that the bride’s feet were actually washed with the water,
a scene depicted in a fragment of sarcophagus at the Museo Nazionale Romano,
Palazzo Altemps.50 This would make it plausible to assume that on this occasion,
too, the ritual water was held in the same bronze basin set on the ground. It
might even be suggested that the domestic hearth, near the lararium, and the
water kept in a basin formed a pair, both often decorated with symbolic snakes,
and both indispensable symbolic and practical entities in the functioning of
a household.51
Conclusions
This article is a methodological attempt to bridge the gap between iconographic

and archaeological source materials, both of which provide information on
the same phenomenon of Roman culture, domestic ablutions as gestures of
curing and caring. In domestic archaeological contexts the basin, a unique item
among household possessions, was often decorated with snakes as apotropaic
signs to be present in crucial moments of familial weakness and danger. In the
sarcophagus images the constant presence of a basin under the bed, common to
representations of birth, illness, death and even marriage and erotic encounters,
marks the passages through moments of infirmity of the family members and
underlines the familial privacy of these scenes. Thus the basin was, like the
hearth, an essential symbol for the continuity of the family.
Karen Hersch, The Roman Wedding. Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (2010) for the
49
touching of fire and water by the bride, 182–4.

50
Serv. Aen. 4, 167; Fest. 3L s.v. aqua et igni. For the sarcophagus showing a veiled bride
whose feet are being washed in a basin set on the ground, (middle of the second century CE),
see Zanker and Ewald, Mythen, 15, Figure 8.
51
The symbolic significance of fire and water in a household is confirmed by various
authors: they represent the generative forces of nature, as well as means of purification. See
Hersch, 182–6.
Table 12.1 Life-cycle sarcophagi with depictions of basins

Agrigento, Amedick, cat. 2, Birth scene: basin Sub-hemispherical basin with
Museo Regionale p. 121, Taf. 53, on the floor slightly out-turned lip, no foot
1–3 and no handles (lebes-type)
Museo Torlonia, Amedick, cat. 198, Birth scene: basin Sub-hemispherical basin with
Rome, inv. 414 p. 154, Taf. 54, on the floor out-turned thickened lip,
1–3 possibly on small ring foot, no
handles (lebes-type)
Death scene: basin Sub-hemispherical basin with
on the floor, under out-turned thickened lip,
the bed possibly on small ring foot, no
Villa Doria Amedick, cat. 236, Birth scene: basin Hemispherical basin with
Pamphili, p. 159, Taf. 55, 2 on the floor rather straight walls and
Rome strongly distinct, thick, out-
turned lip. No distinct foot, no
Louvre, Amedick, cat. 115, Death scene: basin Sub-hemispherical, low basin,
Paris, inv. Ma 318 p. 140, Taf. 56, on the floor, under no distinct foot visible. Two
(from Rome) 1–2, 57,1–2 the bed strap handles set just under
the lip, probably intended as
horizontal. The lip is offset only
by a grooved line (S4000 type)
Ostia Scavi, Amedick 1991, Birth scene: basin Sub-hemispherical basin with
inv. 1170 cat. 107, p. 139, on the floor, with rounded wall, very slightly out-
Taf. 57, 3 a jug turned distinct lip, small ring
foot, two handles set just under
the lip, probably intended as
horizontal (S4000 type)
Museo Nazionale Amedick 1991, Birth scene: basin Very large basin, probably
Romano, cat. *178, p. 150, on the floor oval form, flat base, slightly
inv. 125605 (from Taf, 58, 1–2; 59, rounded walls, slightly distinct
Via Portuense) 1–3; 60,1–2, thickened lip. The handles
are large, flat, horizontal and
have a triangular ansata-form
(bathtub type)
Catacombs of Amedick, cat. 142, Birth scene: basin Hemispherical, basin, no
Praetextatus, p. 145, Taf. 61,8 on the floor handles, plain lip. Stands on
Rome, inv. 315 rather tall conical foot.
Los Angeles, Amedick, cat. 64, Birth scene: basin Hemispherical, markedly
County Museum p. 132, Taf, 62,1 on the floor asymmetrical and rather low
of Art, inv. 47.8.9 and wide vessel, no handles, no
(from Rome) foot, plain lip.
Poggio a Caiano, Amedick 1991, Birth scene: basin

Large, possibly oval vessel with
Villa Medicea cat. 123, p. 142, on the floor rather straight sloping walls,
Taf. 62,2–3 flat base, no handles, the lip is
offset only by a grooved line
(bath-tub type)
Tivoli Amedick 1991, Birth scene: basin Large, possibly oval vessel with
cat. 250, p. 161, on the floor straight sloping walls, flat base,
Taf. 62,6 out-turned flat rim, no handles

(bath-tub type)
Museo Amedick 1991, Birth scene: basin Hemispherical low vessel, no
Chiaramonti, cat. 273, p. 165, on the floor foot, possibly vertical handles
Vatican, inv. 1632 Taf. 64,1–4 above the line of the rim. The
lip is offset only by a grooved
line (S3000 type)
Stuttgart, Amedick 1991, Death scene: basin Hemispherical vessel with
Württembergisches cat. 248, p. 161, on the floor distinct, thickened and
Landesmuseum, Taf. 72,1; 73,1; rounded lip with low ring foot,
Inv. Arch. 6318 74,1–2 no handles, (S-type/lebes-type)
Birth scene: basin Sub-hemispherical vessel with
on the floor distinct rounded lip, no foot
and no handles, a grooved line
at the middle of the body
Museo Nazionale Amedick 1991, Death scene: basin Hemispherical vessel, no
Romano, cat. 177, p. on the floor distinct foot, an out-turned,
inv. 535 150,Taf. 72,2; 73,2 thickened lip with a grooved
line along the edge (lebes-type)
Table 12.2 Large basins found in the Insula of Menander

House Metal basins Terracotta basins
I 10, 1 • mortarium (with pestle): diam.
?, Allison, cat. 13, p. 42.
I 10, 2.3
I 10, 4 • basin (labrum): diam. 1m, bronze, Allison, • conical bowl with flaring lip:
House cat. 127, p. 56, inv. 25892. Atrium diam. 33, cat. 183, p. 64, room 5
of the • basin T: diam. 42,3 cat. 392, p. 87, inv. • mortarium: diam. 46, cat. 629,
Menandro 4748, room A p. 112, courtyard 34
• 2 bronze basins of undefined type: cat.
397–98, p. 88, room B
• pelvis S: diam. 34,5, cat. 695, p. 122,
room 38
• basin S: diam. 41, cat. 827, p. 138, room 43
• basin S: diam. 38, cat. 855, p. 141, room 43
I 10, 6 • ceramic bowl: diam. 25, cat.

997, p. 155, room 6A
• ceramic basin: diam. ?, cat.
1006, p. 156, room 6A
• mortarium: diam. ?, cat. 1010,
p. 156, room 6A
I 10, 7 • basin S: diam. 37, cat. 1178, p. 174, room 7 • 2 mortaria: diam. 29, cat. 1364,
Casa del • basin S: diam. 31, cat. 1179, p. 174, p. 191, room 11
Fabbro room 7, • mortarium: diam. 52, cat. 1388,
• basin: diam. 33, cat. 1553, p. 210, above p. 194, above room 2
the room 9 • mortarium: diam. 53, may be
one of cat. 1364
I 10, 8 • basin S: diam. 32, cat. 1610, p. 217, atrium

I 10, 9
I 10, 10–11 • bronze bucket (situla) inside
Casa degli ceramic basin: bucket diam. 21,
Amanti cat. 1849, room 9
I 10, 18 • mortarium: diam. ?, cat. 1942,
p. 252, room 2
• basin: diam. 33, cat. 1968,
p. 254, room 9
Source: Allison, The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii

Chapter 13
Sexual Incapacity in Medieval
Materia Medica
Susanna Niiranen
Introduction
To him who can’t enjoy with a woman.

Take savory plant and give it to him to eat and to drink.1
This advice from an Occitan thirteenth-century medical recipe collection is a

remnant from medieval sexual medicine. Among other diseases and problems, it
addressed issues associated with what we now call sexual health. The aim of this
chapter is to explore the role of the phenomenon of incapacity in sexuality in
medieval medicine and especially in a register which belongs to the therapeutic
materia medica tradition.2
On rare occasions people are willing to share their problems related to
sexuality. Even more rarely there is pre-modern evidence left from these occasions.
Since sexual behaviour is a largely private activity, subject to varying degrees of
social, cultural, religious, moral and legal norms and constraints, sexual disorders
or incapacities in medieval times are not easy to determine. In medieval medical
recipe collections, as in medieval sources in general, the whole field of sexuality
is by no means exact and is subject to interpretation. There was no such category
as ‘sexuality’ and even today classification and diagnosis may vary remarkably
depending on different medical traditions, cultures and psychological or psychiatric
1
Cambridge UK, Trinity College Library, MS R14.30, fol.150r. (English translation
Susanna Niiranen).
2
The name of the tradition and genre derives from a text by a Greek physician,
Dioscorides (c. 40–90 AD), whose work Peri hules ’iatrikes describes approximately 600
plants, in addition to drugs of animal and mineral origins. In the Middle Ages, the work was
better known by its Latin title, De materia medica, see Jerry Stannard, ‘The Herbal as a Medical
Document’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43 (1969): 214; Medieval pharmacology or
materia medica is largely based on a Dioscordean tradition, see Iolanda Ventura, ‘Un manuale
di farmacologia medievale ed i suoi lettori’, in La Scuola Medica Salernitana, Gli autori e
i testi, eds Danielle Jacquart and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (2007), 466; Minta Collins,
Medieval Herbal. The Illustrative Traditions (2000), 31–93.
schools.3 Moreover, from medical writings we cannot generally ascertain what

the patient’s experience was as the viewpoint is usually that of the healer, and this
bias is a challenge in the whole field of medical history. Nevertheless, the large
amount of surviving medical writings has been one of the most fruitful sources
for the history of sexuality in the Middle Ages.4 Medical discourse, however, is
not unique in revealing attitudes towards sexuality in the Middle Ages. Juridical
and theological, as well as literary and artistic, discourses also provide plenty of
valuable information on the subject.5 As these studies have shown, there was no
single medieval attitude toward sexuality akin to our own modern attitude.6 This
chapter explores sexual infirmitas: symptoms and ailments of sexual disorders,
dysfunctions or incapacities in the context of medieval practical medicine. In
modern terms, the primary characteristic is the impairment of normal sexual
functioning, which of course leads to different assumptions of what is ‘normal’ in
the intricate field of human sexuality in the Middle Ages. Following Ruth Mazo
Karras’ view, human sexuality should not be seen in isolation but rather in terms of
an organic relation to other aspects of life.7 A natural place to look for evidence of
how medieval healers envisaged sexual function as part of their patient’s well-being
is in the recipes of medieval practical medicine.
The chapter maps and gathers different medical conditions associated with
sexuality, but more than illnesses themselves it focuses on the attitudes towards
them. What was considered infirmitas in human sexuality in the high and late
Middle Ages in the source material? Who were the probable sufferers? How
they were cured? Were there ever any views on morality, often strongly related
to sexual behaviour? Moreover, the study explores how these attitudes, beliefs
and practices were gendered. Scholars have recently highlighted interesting
In current classification of diseases, sexual dysfunctions are largely included in the

3
behavioural syndromes and mental disorders associated with physiological dysfunction and
hormonal changes, The ICD-10. Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders. Clinical
Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines, World Health Organisation, 1–267, at 2 and 11,
accessed March 17, 2014, http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/bluebook.pdf.
4
Seminal works include: Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing
Unto Others (2005); Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexualité et savoir médical au
Moyen Age (1985); Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine,
Science, and Culture (1993); Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, eds James Brundage and Vern
L. Bullough (1996); Medieval Sexuality. A Casebook, eds April Harper and Caroline Proctor
(2011).
5
E.g. James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (1987);
Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken and James A. Schultz, eds, Constructing Medieval
Sexuality (1997); Albrecht Classen, ed., Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern
Times (2008).
6
Karras, Sexuality, 2–3.
7
Karras, Sexuality, 5.
Sexual Incapacity in Medieval Materia Medica 225
questions on the gender and status of diverse healers, compilers and the audience
of medical and medicinal texts.8 Concentrating on issues of sexuality, this
chapter contributes to this on-going discussion.
It investigates five high and late medieval medical recipe collections which
represent different geographical areas and textual communities,9 such as
monasteries and the tradition of physicians, apothecaries, as well as other related
healers, namely that of materia medica. Hildegard of Bingen’s Physica represents

a Latin text about natural history and medicine involving practical application
of tinctures, herbs, animal ingredients and precious stones.10 Secondly, Liber de
simplici medicina attributed to Matthaeus Platearius is, according to its name, a
collection of simple medicinal remedies made of herbs, animal ingredients and
minerals, while, thirdly, the anonymous Antidotarium Nicolai is a collection of
more complex, compound medicines. The latter two widely used and diffused
works of the Salernitan Medical School from the twelfth century were translated
into various vernaculars, French versions of which are used in this chapter.11 The
fourth and fifth sources are two anonymous recipe collections that include
simplicia: an Occitan recipe collection12 from the thirteenth–fourteenth century
and a Swedish herbal13 from the fifteenth-century Naantali monastery. These
two unique texts from different parts of Europe are included in order to reveal
8
See Green, ‘Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe’, Signs 14
(1989): 434–73, where it is convincingly argued that woman’s health was not only women’s
business; see also Green, ‘Integrative Medicine. Incorporating Medicine and Health into
the Canon of Medieval European History’, History Compass 7/4 (2009): 1224–30; for the
categories of practitioners, see, for instance, Danielle Jacquart, Le milieu médical en France
(1981) especially on female physicians and healers, 47–54; Plinio Prioreschi, A History of
Medicine (2003), 526–36.
9
A textual community is broadly viewed as a (grammatical) mentality, as a foundation
for models of textual and literary activity, which in turn produces textual communities,
Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture. Grammatica and Literary Theory, 350–1100
(1994), 15.
10
Hildebrandt’s and Gloning’s critical edition of the Liber subtilitatum diversarum
naturarum creaturarum, better known as Physica, which is largely based on the Florence
manuscript from around 1300 (discovered only in 1983), is used in this chapter. The English
translations are from Pricilla Throop, Hildegard Von Bingen’s Physica. The Complete English
Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing (1998).
11
L’antidotaire Nicolas. Deux traductions françaises de l’Antidotarium Nicolai. L’une du
XIVè siècle suivie de quelques recettes de la même époque et d’un glossaire. L’autre du XVe siècle
incomplète. Publiées d’après les manuscrits français 25327 et 14827 de la Bibliothèque nationale,
ed. Paul Dorveaux (1896); Matthaeus Platearius, Le livre des simples médecines: traduction
française du Liber de simplici medicina dictus Circa instans de Platearius: tirée d’un mansucrit
du XIIIe siècle (Ms. 3113 de la Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève de Paris), ed. Paul Dorveaux (1913).
12
Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R. 14.30, Occitan recipe collection.
13
Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, MS A 49, Nadhe(n)dals clost(er)s book.
whether a uniform medical and medicinal culture was dominant regarding

attitudes on sexuality in very different textual communities. Both Hildegard
of Bingen’s Physica and the Naantali Monastery Book are products of the
monastery healing tradition, while Liber de simplici medicina and Antidotarium
Nicolai can be associated with secular medical professions, such as apothecaries
and physicians. The Occitan recipe collection is the most eclectic (or syncretic),
since it includes elements from both simple and learned medicine, in theory and
practice, as well as Christianity (abundant drawn crosses, prayers, snippets of
liturgical texts) and the local folklore of healing magic.14
Translation of medical texts into vernacular languages began generally
in the twelfth century (although later in some areas of Europe), but the term
‘vernacularization’ is understood here not only as language-transfer but in terms
of a broad range of cultural transmission including popularization of knowledge.15
Popular medical genres usually include several strata of local cultures, which are
not necessarily easily distinguishable from learned treatises. These layers might
highlight cultural patterns relative to everyday life in the Middle Ages.16
The concept of infirmitas is taken here broadly, covering a vast range of diseases
and ailments, including what modern medicine terms disorders in sexual desire
and arousal, as well as impotence. Since in the medieval context sex also involved
the potential for reproduction, some gynaecological and obstetrical themes are
included. Certain venereal diseases or sexually transmitted infections, as they are
termed in contemporary medicine, are also briefly discussed.
Materia Medica and Salernitan Practical Medical Tradition
The theoretical framework of medieval medicine often included, in an

unsystematic way, coitus in the list of non-naturals which were regarded as
See, Susanna Niiranen, ‘At the Crossroads of Religion, Magic, Science and Written
14
Culture. The Role of Textual Amulets in Medieval Healing’, in Mental Health, Spirituality,
and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecth Classen (2014),
290–313.
15
Alastair Minnis, Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature (2009), 16;
William Grossgrove, ‘The Vernacularization of Science, Medicine, and Technology in Late
Medieval Europe. Broadening Our Perspectives’, Early Science Medicine 5 (2000): 47–63;
Päivi Pahta, ‘Vernacularisation of Scientific and Medical Writing in Its Sociohistorical
Context’, in Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English, eds Irma Taavitsainen
and Päivi Pahta (2004), 1–18; Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta, ‘Vernacularization of
Medical Writing in English’, Early Science and Medicine 3 (1998): 157–85.
16
According to Tony Hunt, the term ‘popular medicine’ is a synonym with
‘ethnopharmacy’, ‘ethnomedicine’, ‘ethnoiatry’ or ‘folk medicine’, Hunt, Popular Medicine in
Thirteenth-Century England: Introduction and Texts (1990), ix.
determinants of health.17 This theoretical framework was shared and transmitted

with only slight variations by many medical authorities such as Avicenna, also
known as Ibn Sīnā (980–1037). It was in large part due to the influence of Arab
and Persian medical thinking that the role of coitus was increasingly emphasized
in Western medicine from the eleventh and twelfth centuries onwards. In
theoretical medicine, coitus, like all non-naturals, could be used as a means
of moderating human health and wellbeing. The sexual act was one way of
getting rid of harmful bodily superfluities which could move the body towards
imbalance and, thus, sickness. On the other hand, fertility and reproduction
were one of the prime considerations of any practitioners and undoubtedly of
their patients as well. In addition, coitus was considered to have the potential to
increase the emotional well-being of an individual and was even regarded as a
cure for melancholy and anxiety.18
Physician Bernard of Gordon (c. 1238–1308): ‘Few have intercourse for
the sake of offspring, more for the sake of health, and many more for the sake
of pleasure’.19 The role of pleasure is not primary in Western medieval medical
literature but some authors did find it important, partly at least because of
the Galenic model of reproduction, according to which both male and female
produced an active seed crucial to generation. This notion possibly explains the
interest in female pleasure in coitus, fundamental to her production of that seed,
although some authors such as Albert the Great adhered to the one-seed belief,
arguing that women nevertheless experienced greater pleasure. The subject of
female pleasure provoked considerable medical debate, both for and against, but
it is usually not touched upon in the genre of materia medica.20
All the sources utilized in this chapter derive from the medical tradition
which is frequently called practical medicine. It relates to the profession of
medical practitioners and to that of adjacent fields such as physicians, surgeons,
apothecaries, monks, nuns and other official and unofficial healers. This branch
of medicine, emphasizing the significance of a healthy lifestyle and diet, was at
first the focus in Salernitan medicine, ideas from which were spread by such
works as Regimen sanitatis Salernitatum, Liber de Simplici Medicina (known also
as Circa Instans) and Antidotarium Nicolai, the latter two of which are explored
in this chapter. In these texts, practical healing traditions were merged with
17
On the theoretical medical system and on the position of the non-naturals within
it, see Peregrine Horden, ‘Medicine without Doctors and the Medieval European Hospital’,
in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. Barbara S. Bowers (2007), 133–45; on
medieval, theoretical medical teaching, see Cornelius O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine: Medical
Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400 (1998), 83–5.
18
Proctor, ‘Between Medicine and Morals’, 118–19.
19
Cited in Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, 137.
20
On medieval medical views on sexual pleasure, Joyce Salisbury, ‘Gendered Sexuality’,
in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, 92–6.
Greco-Roman medical knowledge and Arab and Jewish medical traditions.21

The Salernitan practitioners of the tenth and eleventh centuries consisted of
many clergy and the renowned ‘women of Salerno’. University medicine is often
included in paraphrases of medicinal recipes, not as an exhaustive theoretical
framework but rather as an underlying current.
Some medical authorities are mentioned in the sources. Le livre des
simples médecines relies several times on the ‘dames de Salerne’.22 The name
of ‘Constantine’23 in a recipe related to menstruation undoubtedly means
Constantinus Africanus (c.1017–87), the eminent medical figure from the
eleventh century, translator of Arab texts and compiler of many fundamental
medical works throughout the Middle Ages, such as Viaticum and Canon.
His works also include a treatise called De Coitu, which is not mentioned,
however, in any recipe collections studied here. Instead, there are some general
references to Muslim (Saraceni) medical customs.24 Similarly, the Occitan
collection refers to Muslim habits using the Latin phrase ‘Et [h]oc custodiunt
Saraceni’.25 Antidotarium Nicolai also brings up Salernitan medicine. It does
not acknowledge Salernitan women, but surgeons, ‘anciens cirurgiens de
Salerne’.26 The Swedish text in turn recognizes three authorities by name: one
ancient, ‘Plinius’,27 and two medieval, ‘Ysaac’ (probably Isaac Iudaeus, a medical
philosopher)28 and the encyclopaedic work De proprietatibus rerum.29
Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine. An Introduction to

21
Knowledge and Practice (1990), 13–14, 57–8.

22
‘Dames de Salerne’ are explicitly mentioned in Matthaeus Platearius, Le livre des
simples médecines, 31, 35, 36.
23
Ibid., 142.
24
E.g. a passage describing how Muslims use water lily as medicine, ibid., 139.
25
Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.14.30 fol. 160r.
26
Antidotaire Nicolas, 18.
27
Gaius Plinius Secundus or Pliny the Elder, whose Historia Naturalis was held in high
esteem throughout the Middle Ages, see e.g. edition, Pliny, Natural History in 10 volumes,
ed. and trans. Horace Rackham (1952).
28
Isḥāq ibn-Sulaymān al-Isrā’īlī known also as Isaac Iudaeus (d. c. 932), a Jewish oculist
and philosopher born in Egypt, whose medical treatises are often found closely connected
with Articella manuscripts, Raphaela Veit, ‘Isaac Iudaeus’, in Medieval Science, Technology,
and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, eds Thomas F. Glick, Steven J. Livesey and Faith Wallis
(2005), 275–6; Alexander Altmann and S.M. Stern, Isaac Israeli: a Neoplatonic Philosopher of
the Early Tenth Century: His Works Transl. With Comments and an Outline of His Philosophy
(1958).
29
De proprietatibus rerum was compiled by Bartolomeus Anglicus around 1250. This
encyclopaedia for students and preachers enjoyed wide circulation in the later Middle Ages.
Its content encompasses theology and astrology as well as the natural sciences, as understood
in the middle of the thirteenth century, including medicine. The text also circulated in
vernacular versions, see, for instance, On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of
All authorities mentioned were important for university medicine, both in

teaching and studying.30 Unlike the three other texts, Hildegard’s Physica and
the Occitan collection do not refer to conventional medical (Classical nor
medieval) authorities such as Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna or others. Physica
reflects contemporary norms and customary beliefs with regard to the diseases
and recommended therapeutic measures. References to local flora and fauna,
the occasional use of German vocabulary as well as details provided in the

descriptions suggest that the information was not merely copied, but that the
author likely had firsthand experience of cultivating, gathering and preparing
natural substances employed as medicines, and had personally observed
individuals suffering from many of the illnesses described.31 Regarding practical
healers, the Occitan collection refers once to the profession of physician, metge32
(Occ.), but besides vague references such as to ‘Salernitan women’, references
to practitioners are scarce in all collections. Based on this fact and other
characteristics such as the strong indications of oral tradition, it seems that the
Occitan collection belongs to a more popular recipe genre than the rest of the
sources. For instance, the use of the second person singular in verbs such as ‘take’,
‘put’, ‘add’ and ‘boil’ signals the virtual presence of addresser and addressee as
participants in discourse.33 Themes such as drunkenness, sexuality and various
ailments and discomforts associated with the most intimate aspects of human
life are treated in a very familiar way, which may not have caused embarrassment
among a medieval audience, as it did for later generations.34 Some recipes
Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum. ed. Seymour; Heinz Meyer, ‘Bartholomäus

Anglicus, ‘de proprietatibus rerum’ Selbstverständnis und Rezeption’, Zeitschrift für Deutsches
Altertum 99 (1988): 237–4.
30
Although Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna were the most often used authorities in
medical texts of universities, Pliny, Isaac Iudeaus and Bartolomeus Anglicus belong to the
group of the most frequently cited medical writers. Louis Dulieu, La médecine à Montpellier
1, Le Moyen Age (1975), 95; Irma Taavitsainen, ‘Early English Scientific Writing: New
Corpora, New Approaches’, in Textual Healing. Studies in Medieval English Medical, Scientific
and Technical Texts, eds Javier E. Diaz Vera and Rosario Caballero (2009), 177–206, at 182.
31
Debra L. Stoudt, ‘The Medical, the Magical, and the Miraculous in the Healing Arts
of Hildegard of Bingen’, in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, eds Beverly Mayne Kienzle,
Debra L. Stoudt and George Ferzoco (2014), 258.
32
On categories of healers and the Occitan term metge, see Jacquart, Le milieu médical
en France, 32.
33
See other characteristics typical of oral discourses, Quintana-Toledo, ‘Orality in the
Middle English Medical Recipes’, in Textual Healing (2009), 153–75, esp. 173.
34
For example Meyer, an early prominent editor of the compilation, who sees no need
to translate certain expressions such as postairol (posterior). However, he explains that it
is not found in dictionaries: ‘Postairol se comprend aisément, quoique non relevé dans les
dictionnaires’. Paul Meyer, ‘Recettes médicales en provençal’, Romania 32 (1903): 268–99, at
297 n. 2.
are scratched out and partly obliterated possibly because they were viewed
as superstitious.35
Female and Male Sexual Infirmitas

Sexual infirmitas in recipes can be divided into five different categories.

The first group deals with sexual impotence and infertility, the second with
hypersexuality, such as luxuria, and the third consists of wounds and spots on
the genitals, which might indicate sexually transmitted diseases but also other
medical conditions. The fourth group consists of recipes explicitly for the use
of men, such as advice to prevent premature ejaculation. In contrast, there
are no recipes for women relating to the sexual act itself or advice concerning
female genitalia, save in relation to venereal diseases. Instead, Le livre des simples
médecines, L’antidotaire Nicolas as well as Occitan and Swedish recipe collections
include recipes for menstruation and impregnation, which form the fifth group.
It is difficult to say whether these recipes were more directed at a male or a female
audience. Since all kinds of recipes are mixed together, they apparently served
patients representing both sexes or rather practitioners who treated both men
and women.36 It is not impossible that recipes might have served for teaching or
studying purposes and also been objects of human curiosity. Bodily functions
and their cures certainly must have interested many people who may not have
been in acute need of treatment.
Impotence is not defined in recipes and nor are its causes. A recipe cited at
the beginning of the article from the anonymous Occitan collection describes
the condition in the following way: ‘To him who can’t enjoy with a woman’.37
There is a Latin version for the same ailment Ad eum qui non potest occumbere
cum muliere.38 In both recipes, the verbs poder (Occ.) and potere (Lat.) addressing
the sufferer reveal that it is a question of capacity, not will, but whether the
ailment is due to physiological, psychological or social causes remains unknown.
Whereas the Occitan recipe relies on herbalism, the treatment offered by the
Latin counterpart is pure magic and the recipe makes use of the fumigated teeth
of a dead person. Indeed, most of the recipes against impotence in this collection
See, for instance, a recipe for love magic, Si vols eser amatz per femena (If you want to
35
be loved by a woman), Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.14.30, fol. 159r; See also
Brunel, ‘Recettes médicales’, 146, fn. 1.
36
See, for instance, a case where a fourteenth-century female practitioner heals a male
patient with a genital injury without touching the wound, Joseph Shatzmiller, Médecine et
justice en Provence médiéval. Documents de Manosque, 1262–1348 (1989), 150–51.
37
‘Ad aicel que non pot ab femna jazer’, Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS
R.14.30 fol. 149v.
38
Ibid., fol. 144r.
invite the use of magic. The accessories needed are not expensive or complex,
but everyday objects such as firedogs and rings. The teeth of a dead person
were probably not as easily available. Neither of these ‘medicines’ was sold at
apothecaries but belonged rather to the domestic sphere. Contrary to the learned
discourse on magically caused impotence, both in medicine and theology (for
example confessors’ manuals, medical compendia and commentaries on canon
law), these recipes do not explain that magic could cause impotence.39
These kinds of recipes are close to love-magic and the Occitan collection
includes several of them; however, they are not studied in this chapter. Suffice it
to say, in pre-modern societies great significance was attached to coupling and
pairing and concerned both the individual and society. This was the societal
norm although celibacy and sexual continence were usual e.g. for those who had
taken religious vows.
Unwished sexual activity or even hypersexuality, often associated with
moralistic attitudes and terms such as luxuria or incontinentia, are also dealt with
in recipes.40 Hildegard gives advice for male ‘sufferers’ who are incontinens or who
need to ‘extinguish their carnal delight and lust’. According to Hildegard, the
cause of incontinentia might be magic or bodily heat. The cure in this case comes
from the magic plant mandrake (mandragora).41 In the Occitan collection, one
recipe is in the Occitan language, while the following two for the same ailment
(luxuria) are written in Latin. All three evidently derive from the herbal genre:
the medicine includes only known medicinal plants: savory, garlic and oats.42
One recipe is addressed explicitly to luxurious women: if a wolf ’s right testicle
was mixed with oil and a woman’s genitals anointed with this unguent, it was
believed to diminish a woman’s excessive desire.43 Similar ingredients such as
animals’ (right) testicles were used in first-century medical cures by Pliny the
39
Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (2006).
40
Luxuria and incontentia were vices, which Roman moralists associated both with
sexual immorality and sumptuary excesses. Those susceptible to sexual temptation, it was
believed, were also prone to indulge other kinds of excesses as well, Catherine Edwards,
The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (1993), 5; similarly, the medieval concept of
luxuria was associated both with sexual desire and the desire or greed for material goods.
In the Middle Ages, luxuria was often attributed to women, Susan Wade, ‘Abbot Erluin’s
Blindness: The Monastic Implications of Violent Loss of Sight’, in Negotiating Community
and Difference in Medieval Europe Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in
Latin Christendom, eds Katherine Allen Smith and Scott Wells (2009), 205–22.
41
Hildegard of Bingen, Physica (vol. 1), Lib 1–67, 97; idem., Lib. 1–56, 88.
42
Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R. 14.30 fol. 148r; See also ‘Ad esteiner
luxuria. Pren la ruda e de coliandre e da l’en a beure et a manjar cascun dia’, fol. 148v.
43
‘A femna trop luxuriosa. Prena lo coillo destre del lop et mesclal ab oli et ungan soven
lo con dedinz’, Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R. 14.30, fol. 144v.
Elder and Dioscorides.44 In the French version of the Antidotarium Nicolai there
is a vague mention that a complex medicinal admixture would also be effective
against luxurie.45 The same text advises twice how to provoke desire: the medicine
in both cases includes imported spices such as cardamom, ginger, clove, nutmeg
and dates, as well as local savory.46 Exotic flavours in medieval Europe were often
considered aphrodisiacs. Many of these were the same that were thought to help
cure impotence in medieval Persian medicine. Persian physicians developed

many substances that were supposed to have aphrodisiac properties. Some
of these remedies were also believed to have fertility-enhancing effects.47 The
pattern is reminiscent of medieval medicinal practices used in Western Europe
and probably stimulated ideas about curing male impotence.
A recipe against premature ejaculation can be found in many medieval
medical manuals for increasing the amount of time for sexual pleasure but
possibly also for shared pleasure, which was believed to optimize the probability
of conception according to contemporary generation theory. Cures for ‘qui
ne poet retenir lor sperme’ range between the simple admixtures of the Livre
des simples médecines and real compound medicines such as yeraloglodion (also
hieralogodion) in L’Antidotaire Nicolas.48 Like many compound medicines,
yeraloglodion was apparently made for curing various diseases from liver
conditions to sciatica. According to the Trotula, a group of texts on women’s
medicine, which was composed in the heartland of Salernitan medicine, in
Salerno, it additionally ‘brings on the menses’.49 Hildegard, in turn, approaches
the subject from another angle: she refers to a man, who ‘is sometimes stirred up
in delight, so that his sperm arrives at the point of emission but has in some way
been retained within in his body and he has begun to be ill from it’. Hildegard
suggests rue (ruta), one of the chief medicinal herbs in Ancient and medieval
medicine, to be the cure.50
Regarding ejaculation, there was not only a medical but also legal discussion
going on around the year 1200 during the famous case of the rejection of the
Danish Princess Ingeborg by the French King Philip II Augustus. For reasons
unknown, on the day after his marriage to Ingeborg (1193), King Philip tried
to send his young wife back to Denmark. According to the thirteenth-century
biographer of Innocent III, the King tried to consummate the marriage, but
Rider, Magic and Impotence, 22–3.

44
Antidotaire Nicolas, 7, 8.
45
46
Ibid., 5, 36–7.
47
Maryam Ghadiri and Gorji, ‘Natural Remedies for Impotence in Medieval Persia’,
International Journal of Impotence Research 16 (2004): 80–83.
48
Matthaeus Platearius, Le livre des simples médecines, 37; L’antidotaire Nicolas, 35–6.
49
Monica H. Green, ed. and trans., The ‘Trotula’: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s
Medicine (2001), 127–8.
50
Hildegard of Bingen, Physica (vol. 1) Lib. I–64, 93.
‘when he had entered the marriage bed, he quickly left her, conceiving such
hatred for her that he could scarcely bear the mention of her in his presence’.51
Contemporary chroniclers explained the King’s behaviour in different ways,
from the bride’s bad smell to sorcery.52 John Baldwin, who has exhaustively
explored both Philip Augustus’ government and his personal life, interprets
the King’s behaviour as an acute sexual trauma.53 Eventually, Philip Augustus
spent 20 years repudiating the marriage while Ingeborg steadfastly proclaimed

that she and Philip had consummated the marriage. Philip’s legal advisers
attempted to make a distinction between intercourse (the commingling of
sexes) and insemination; that is to say, penetration occurred but not ejaculation.
The Church, however, did not recognize this distinction, which therefore did
not provide sufficient grounds for the annulment of the marriage. The Pope
maintained that Ingeborg had to be treated with full wifely rights, but she was
practically imprisoned in religious houses, and Philip produced heirs with
another woman.54
From the present day point of view it may seem curious that the king’s
possible ejaculation could have been discussed publicly, not merely as
entertaining gossip but as a conceptual and jurisprudential matter, even if it was
widely maintained in medical discourse that, for mostly adult men and also for
women, regular sexual intercourse was an essential part of a healthy lifestyle.
For males, ejaculation meant purging and expelling excessive bodily fluids. How
this was done when abstinence was required, for example in monasteries, is not
explained in medicinal works.
Another curious example associated with ‘men’s medicine’ in the monastery
context is one Swedish recipe which describes the cure for a ‘man’s swollen tool’
(manz bulit anbudh) with linen cloth and wormwood (malyrt in Late Old
Swedish, artemisia in Latin).55 In many cases, it is impossible, and often fruitless,
to make a retrospective diagnosis, but this example invites some suggestions. If
51
The Deeds of Pope Innocent III, by an Anonymous Author, ed. and trans. James
M. Powell (2004), 64.
52
Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, 124;
Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I. Liber 4, Cap. XXVI, 369.
53
John Baldwin, ‘The Many Loves of Philip Augustus’, in The Medieval Marriage Scene:
Prudence, Passion, Policy, eds Sherry Roush and Cristelle L. Baskins (2005), 68; Cf. idem.,
The Government of Philip Augustus. Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages
(1986), 357, 568.
54
Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages. Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle
Ages (2012), 61–4; George Conklin, ‘Ingeborg of Denmark, Queen of France, 1193–1223’,
in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (1997), 39–52.
55
Probably Artemisia absinthium since it is mentioned that ‘Malyrt th3 kallar
absinthium oppa latino’. (Wormwood is called absinthium in Latin.) Stockholm, National
Library of Sweden, MS A 49, fols 175r–75v.
we assume that it is a medical condition, it might refer to a condition called

priapismus. Priapism is a prolonged and painful erection which persists beyond,
or is unrelated to, sexual stimulation. According to modern sources, it is an
uncommon condition, though it can be fatal if the condition is prolonged.56 Or
the case might be associated with an unspecified venereal disease. If the recipe
relates to a man’s normal sexual functions, it is certainly targeted at monastery
use in the struggle to suppress undesired temptations.57 The suggested cure,

wormwood, was a cure-all, but it was widely used in women’s medicine too, for
abortion as well as to induce menstruation and labour.58 Nevertheless, these
kinds of issues might also arouse human curiosity in cloisters, thus increasing the
understanding of the mechanisms and functions of the human body. As much
recent research has shown, monks and nuns were not always as desexualized,
ascetic and celibate beings as previously assumed.59
For women, there are no specific recipes for the sexual act itself, or for
uncommon sexual disorders. The biggest and predictable difference is that
women’s sexual infirmitas in recipes is strongly related to their fertility. Recipes
to do with menses and conceiving form the biggest group of conditions relating
to human sexuality in every source studied, a fact which leads to diverse
conclusions. Human reproduction is indeed an essential issue in any pre-
modern culture. In Le livre de simples médecines alone, which can be regarded
as a manual for domestic and unofficial healers, there are dozens of recipes just
for strengthening the womb, for instance. This might indicate a large female
audience, largely responsible for domestic and other health care. It is also
distinctly possible that these recipes enjoyed a larger audience, as Monica Green
has convincingly showed.60 Healing and reproduction were not only women’s
business but interested monks, priests, medical practitioners, book collectors
and no doubt other members of the male audience.
Following the ideas of ancient authorities, many medieval medical authors
within university medicine blamed the womb for many of the health problems
suffered by women. For instance, according to Plato there is a link between a
woman’s desire for sexual intercourse and her womb’s desire for child-bearing.61
Furthermore, he relates that if the womb is deprived of this desire, it will begin
56
Arthur Burnett and Trinity Bivalacqua, ‘Priapism: New Concepts in Medical and
Surgical Management’, Urologic Clinics of North America 38 (2011): 185–94.
57
On bodily chastity in the monastery context, see Julie Kerr, Life in the Medieval
Cloister (2009), 138–44.
58
John Riddle, ‘Manuscript Sources for Birth Control’, in Manuscript Sources of
Medieval Medicine: A Book of Essays, ed. Margaret Rose Schleissner (1995), 145–55, at 152.
59
See e.g. Lynda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies. Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early
Medieval West (2010).
60
See fn 8.
61
Plato, Timaeus 91a–d.
to move in the woman’s body and block the passages of respiration.62 The belief
in the ‘wandering womb’ was also known in the teachings of the Hippocratic
corpus. It was equally part of Classical Arabo-Islamic medicine, particularly in
ar-Rāzī’s al-Ḥāwī and then adopted by Latin writers.63 The womb was regarded
as an autonomous organ inside the female body in medieval medicine. It was
believed that if the womb was not fixed in place by pregnancy, the womb could
cause many adverse health conditions. Use of odoriferous therapy persisted

in medieval gynaecological texts and it was the basis of treatment for uterine
suffocation and uterine prolapse, for instance.64 Smells were considered real
substances that could penetrate the brain and the body through the nose. They
also carried the humoral qualities of the substances from which they emanated.
They were therefore hot, cold, humid or dry. Consequently, their potential
was significant, both for causing disease and for therapy. On this basis many
medicinal ingredients were believed to have power, both domestic plants and
substances extracted from animals as well as more exotic, imported products.65
Le livre des simples médecines depicts menstruation as ‘to have the nature
of woman’.66 Medieval gender identity and its signs were sustained through
these corporal signs.67 The onset of menstruation marked an important stage in
determining the transition from childhood to womanhood in medieval society.
The age of consent, set variously at between 12 and 14 throughout Europe,
appears commensurate with the arrival of the menarche. It was also a class-
dependent issue, as a certain weight and percentage of body fat was required
to trigger the first period. Furthermore, the work contribution of the upper
class was not as important as that of lower class girls, who stayed at home longer
working for their families. Those lower class females whose lives were more
physically active and whose diets comprised more vegetables started their cycles
later, a fact which is borne out in the statistics relating to the age of marriage,
although these are also determined by many other economic and social factors.68
62
Plato, Timaeus 91c1–7.
63
See e.g. Joan Cadden, ‘Western Medicine and Natural Philosophy’, in Handbook
of Medieval Sexuality (2005), 51–80; ‘Medicine and Natural Philosophy: Naturalistic
Traditions’, in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, eds Judith
M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (2013), 88–92.
64
Green, The Trotula, 29–30.
65
Richard Palmer, ‘In Bad Odour: Smell and its Significance in Medicine from
Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century’, in Medicine and the Five Senses, eds William F. Bynum
and Roy Porter (2005), 61–8.
66
‘Por fere avoir nature de feme’, Matthaeus Platearius, Le livre des simples médecines,
40, 50, 53, 57, 84, 91, 93, 115, 130 etc.
67
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), 136.
68
Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘The Girl and the Hourglass: Periodization of Women’s
Lives in Western Preindustrial Societies’, in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern
Not only did regular menstruation indicate fertility, but according to the theory
of humours, women’s excess fluids were flushed away by regular monthly courses.
Menstruation was considered essential for maintaining women’s general health
as regular ejaculation was for men.69 It was seen as a process of purification,
flushing out impurities. In medical language, the verb ‘purge’ often described
this process. If this did not occur, the wastes were believed to build up and cause
illness. According to Hippocratic and Galenic thought, absence of menstruation

was of grave concern to medieval medical writers and practitioners. It meant
that one of the major purgative systems of the female body was inoperative.
Inducing menstruation was the goal of a large number of recipes. For this reason,
the largest percentage of prescriptions for women’s diseases was advice for
provoking the menses.70 Parallel studies on various medieval recipe collections
usually show the same emphasis. For instance, Alain Touwaide points out that
De materia medica and the Alphabetical Herbal included in Byzantine hospital
manuals had recipes concerning amenorrhoea as one of the most frequently
occurring recipes.71 Modern anthropologists have noted that excessive concern
with menstruation is a characteristic of many birth-positive cultures, while
medievalist John Riddle maintained that this rich body of knowledge indicates
fertility control and use of contraceptives and abortifacients.72
Many vernacular herbals or recipe books make reference to the ‘flowers’, a
euphemism for menses, but also an image which has positive connotations of
blossoming and growth. These recipe collections do not use the term ‘flower’,
but talk about female ‘purging’ or having the female ‘nature’ or ‘flux’. Regulating
menstrual bleeding was the ideal, so excessive menstrual blood was regarded as a
disorder. It was believed to cause imbalance in the body. Recipes against excessive
menstrual blood can be found in practically every medical recipe collection.73
Europe, eds Anne Jackson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn and Silvana Seidel Menchi (2001), 66–7;
on the age-specific female marital fertility, see Massimo Livi Bacci, A Concise History of World
Population (1994), 116–17.
69
Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, 104–6; see e.g. Hildegard of
Bingen, who combines regular menstruation, healthy lifestyle and harmonious emotional
life. On the other hand, she sees menstruation as a remnant of Eve and original sin. Hildegard
of Bingen, Causae et curae, lib.II, ed. Paulus Kaiser (1903), 103, 107.
70
Green, Trotula, 20.
71
Alain Touwaide, ‘Byzantine Hospital Manuals (Iatrosophia) as a Source for the
Study of Therapeutics’, in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. Barbara Bowers
(Aldershot: Ashgate 2007), 147–3. at172.
72
Etienne Van De Walle and Elisha P. Renne, Regulating Menstruation. Beliefs,
Practices, Interpretations (2001); Riddle, ‘Manuscript Sources for Birth Control’, 145–55.
73
See, e.g. ‘Por restraindre la nature de feme’, Matthaeus Platearius, Le livre des simples
médecines, 5, 32.
Certain formulations related to female reproduction catch the reader’s

attention. The approach seems to focus on a woman’s choice to become fertile
and pregnant, as is suggested by the use of phrases such as ‘a woman who
wants to conceive’ or ‘a woman wishing to be impregnated and to be fertile’
or simply ‘for help to conceive’.74 Herbs could be used to prepare a woman’s
body for impregnation. The central organ in this was the womb, which was
to be strengthened by a certain diet or herbs. Difficulties with impregnation

or sterility were not commonly mentioned in this material. Holding a textual
amulet with some cryptic letters written on the piece of paper was the advice for
a woman who ‘cannot conceive’.75 Male sterility was not actually treated, even if
it was discussed in medical literature.
Chastity was seen as a choice even if it is not specified whether the advice is
addressed to men or women or both: ‘for one who wishes to save one’s chastity’.76
Chastity was not only a constraint of a religious lifestyle, but also a reality for some
lay groups such as widows, though after a period of widowhood many widows
used to remarry. During widowhood, their experience as sexual partners enabled
them to conduct extramarital affairs, offering a breeding ground for negative
stereotypes such as the lusty widow, the scheming widow, the masochistic widow
or the widow as simple-minded victim. However, threats to lineage, property or
other patrilineal prerogatives could provoke attempts by families and officials to
reintegrate widows into institutions of patriarchal control.77
This range of alternatives indicates that these writings were clearly responding
to the needs and concerns of a varied audience. The suggested cure for saving
one’s chastity is to smell camphor. Inhaling the scent of camphor (undiluted
or mixed with rosewater, for instance) was believed to be beneficial to people
with ‘hot’ temperaments. Inhaling it and taking it internally suppress sexual
desire. Camphor powder diluted in ‘jus de morelle’ (probably black nightshade,
solanum nigrum) was also the treatment for men who suffered from premature
ejaculation. The advice was to soak a piece of cotton in the admixture of jus and
camphor and then spread it on the hips and the penis.78
The relation of venereal diseases to sexual activities was recognized in the
Middle Ages, but the diversity of symptoms is often impossible to interpret with
diagnostic certainty. In sources studied here, only two different conditions are
74
Le livre des simples médecines, 33, 64.
75
Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.14.30, fol. 149v.
76
‘A cellui qui vuelt tenir chasteé. Faites li odorer le camphre’. Le livre des simples
médecines, 38.
77
Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner, eds, Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe (1999). See also, Beattie, Medieval Single Women. The Politics of Social Classification
in Late Medieval England (2007).
78
Le livre des simples médecines, 37.
differentiated by name: ‘erpés’79 and ‘cranc’80 as well as various spots and wounds
on both the female and male genital organs.81 The Occitan recipe collection
mentions cranc and crancus (Lat.) several times. ‘Crancus’ and its Occitan
equivalent ‘cranc’ might refer both to cancer and chancroid. In his glossary,
one of the editors of the text, Clovis Brunel, offers only chancre as a translation
for ‘cranc’. On the other hand, the first Latin recipe of the whole collection
‘[A]d fistulam vel crancum. Accipe mel coctum …’ does not specify the nature
nor the place of the ‘crancus’. Nevertheless, this material indicates that no
moral judgements are attached to venereal diseases or medical conditions in
genital areas.
Conclusion
Recipe collections from different parts of Europe and from different

textual environments in fact do share several characteristics in dealing with
sexual ailments. Since medieval medical recipes can often reproduce earlier
compilations, analysis requires caution. Do these medical recipes tell us about
real medic(in)al needs of medieval people or were they compiled and copied
and did they survive rather as a result of tradition and human curiosity? Based
on facts we know about the long-term tradition of materia medica as well as
medieval social conditions, it seems that all three are valuable reasons in the
context of sexual infirmitas: tradition, curiosity and genuine need. Medical
recipes were transmitted and probably also used in various ways. Recipes
include a large amount of simple remedies made of natural ingredients, mostly
fresh or dried herbs, but also animal and mineral ingredients, even magic. These
ingredients were normally easily available for practically everybody. This typical
approach associated with recipes has also been called experimenta or empirica.
Besides priests, there were clerks, notaries, dyers, itinerant drink sellers, pepperers
and herbalists among these healers.82 The presence of compound medicines
composed of dozens of ingredients and complex processes suggests that they
were originally compiled for medical professionals such as apothecaries. These
kinds of collections served often as a model for compilers of various admixtures
of medical remedies. However, no stigma or sign of disgrace or discredit, which
sets a person apart from others, is attached in recipes regarding sexual infirmitas,
Le livre des simples médecines, ‘Contra maladie qui a nom erpès’, 8.
79
Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.14.30, e.g. fol. 143r. and fol. 156r.
80
81
See, e.g. the Swedish collection in which nettle seeds mixed in honey are said to be
good for unspecified testicle illness. Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, MS A 49, fol.
175.
82
Catherine Rider, ‘Medical Magic and the Church in 13th-Century England’, Social
History of Medicine 24 (2011): 93; Jacquart, Le milieu médical, 44–6.
a common attitude in every recipe collection studied here. It is still good to bear
in mind that recipes do not define or explain the specific nature of disturbances,
but rather focus on cures. Attention is often, but not necessarily, associated with
reduced reproductive potential.
The recipes provide a lot of gender-specific material. Information regarding
venereal diseases, gynaecological and obstetrical recipes as well as other sexual
health conditions was addressed explicitly to men and women. The medical
purpose of the recipes is clearly to alleviate pain and many simple medicines such
as herbs and other domestic ingredients were cheap and available. When magic
is introduced – as in the Occitan collection and in Hildegard’s Physica – it was
solely in its benevolent form, whereas evil and harmful ‘black magic’ is absent
and not used in order to cause impotence, for instance. Sexual dysfunctions
seem to have invited the use of amulets for transitional situations such as birth,
pairing, reproduction and death. On the other hand, recipes were usually related
to the profession of healers and their income. It was in their interest to have
patients and to sell medicine to people from different social groups. This is one
reason why recipes contain various ingredients ranging from ordinary herbs
growing in backyards to expensive, imported spices or other ‘special’ plants
sold by pepperers or apothecaries with ‘special’ knowledge needed for unusual
treatment, such as the use of mandrake, a plant with human-shaped roots, which
cries when it is pulled from the earth. It was believed that anyone who hears the
plant’s cry dies or goes mad. It was therefore often advised that it has to be a dog
to pull the plant from the ground.
Curiously, despite common beliefs regarding the maladies and generally
recommended therapeutic measures, there are not many similarities at the
individual recipe level between the five recipe collections, for example the
systematic use of a certain plant for a certain ailment. This is due to the fact
that medieval materia medica is a very broad tradition, embracing various
cultural layers and apparently plenty of regional or even local knowledge.
Based on this limited survey, it seems that Hildegard’s Physica contains the
most divergent sources, probably local in origin and perhaps founded on her
personal empirical experience. One suggestion is that she received support from
persons who visited her monastery. One such individual was the Swedish Bishop
Siward from Uppsala, whose impressive library may have enhanced her medical
knowledge. In spite of this possible Swedish-German network, it is hard to see
any closer ties between Physica and the Naantali monastery book, though for
a more definitive view this topic would require further investigation. Many
monasteries did produce and copy various texts, but they could also receive and
heal patients in hospices and infirmaries. Medical knowledge was also needed
by cloister inhabitants for their own use, especially when physicians were not
available, as was the situation in Naantali. The first university-educated doctors
apparently did not come to Finland until after the Catholic Era in the sixteenth
century. In addition to monasteries and physicians, who increasingly took

over the responsibility for curing and healing from monks and priests after the
emergence of universities, other professionals, such as apothecaries, appeared
on the medical market. All these groups of professional, semi-, quasi- or even
unprofessional healers participated in practising, teaching and conserving the
art of healing by copying, writing and compiling medicinal texts.
To sum up, medieval recipe books from both the South and the North
show that when institutional care was limited, recipes provided information,
therapies and prevention for men and women regardless of their social group
and in the most intimate areas of life too, such as sexuality. In recipes, sexual
incapacity was often, but not necessarily related to infertility. It was regarded as a
physical deviancy or weakness but the most often, as a sign of bodily imbalance.
Moreover, the tension between sexual activity and abstinence can be perceived.
Practical medical texts, produced and consumed in diverse textual communities,
also exercised an important influence on the development of medieval ideas
about sexuality.
Chapter 14
Miracles and the Body Social:
Infirmi in the Middle Dutch Miracle
Collection of Our Lady of Amersfoort*
Jonas Van Mulder
Introduction
The allusion in my title to Natalie Zemon Davis’ acclaimed essay of 1981, ‘The
Sacred and the Body Social’, is manifest. Her work and that of other scholars
navigating the currents of the new cultural history of the late 1970s and 1980s
has given new impetus to bring to the surface the multiple and complex ways in
which religious ideas, traditions and practices have shaped communities in urban
contexts through time. Among other institutions and groups, religious and lay
confraternities have played pivotal roles in marshalling civic religious cultures in
medieval and early modern Europe. Offering devotional and social opportunities
to individuals and groups, they impacted heavily on both devotional culture and
social cohesion. Religious confraternities have been approached mostly from
institutional, political and charitable perspectives, and as a result little attention
has been given to their production of religious texts and the latter’s relationship
with their function as social institutions.1 Registers of contemporary miracle
accounts attributed by pilgrims to the patron saints of a fraternity are one type
of devotional writings that allows us to illuminate the nexus of the social and
the devotional. A large number of miracle studies have been carried out in the
* I am thankful to Veerle Fraeters and the editors of this volume for their commentaries
and Imke de Gier for revising the English text.
1
Kruisheer, Onze Lieve Vrouwe-broederschap te Doesburg, ca. 1397–1580 (1976); Trio,
Volksreligie als Spiegel van een stedelijke samenleving (1993); ‘Middeleeuwse broederschappen
in de Nederlanden. Een balans en perspectieven voor verder onderzoek’, Trajecta 3 (1994):
97–109; L.P.W. de Graaff, ‘De broederschappen op het platte land in de provincie Utrecht
op het eind van de Middeleeuwen. Een inventarisatie’, De kerk en de Nederlanden: archieven,
instellingen, samenleving (1997): 233–45; Remco Sleiderink, ‘De dichters Jan Smeken en
Johannes Pertcheval en de devotie tot Onze Lieve Vrouw van de Zeven Weeën. Nieuwe
gegevens uit de rekeningen van de Brusselse broederschap (1499–1516)’, Queeste. Tijdschrift
voor middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden 19 (2012): 42–69.
previous decades, following the works of Ronald Finucane, Pierre-André Sigal

and Benedicta Ward, medievalists who have contributed to establishing the
importance of miracle texts for the study of religious culture in the Middle Ages
as well as in other times.2
Wide-ranging scholarship has shown that miracles were deeply embedded
in contemporary moral and social discourses.3 This chapter hopes to offer a
methodological contribution to the existing research on miracles and fraternal

life in the Low Countries by approaching miracle registers as vehicles of moral
and social instruction. It will do so by focusing on the cult of Our Lady of
Amersfoort. Miracles were being recorded by registrars of the fraternity of
Our Lady of Amersfoort from 1444 on – the year in which a small miraculous
Madonna was found in a riverbed – and ceased in 1545. The focus on one miracle
collection is not just prompted by the limited frame of this chapter, but also is
informed by a methodological concern. Of all preserved Middle Dutch miracle
collections, the Amersfoort miracle register is the most extensive in numeric
terms (542 miracles), but characterized by a minimal and highly condensed
registration style. Whereas the miracle stories neither comment nor elaborate
on the fraternity’s charitable program, they do convey, on a subliminal level,
directives for attitudes towards the infirmi of society: the physically weak, the
juridically troubled and the socially subordinate. Miracles functioned as a kind
of ‘social glue’, and this chapter will explore their discursive representations of
social and devotional behaviour.
The Miracles of Our Lady of Amersfoort
For Amersfoort, the second half of the fifteenth century was characterized
by both distress and upsurge in economic activity. The population growth of
the first half of the fifteenth century, with high peaks of immigration of new
citizens in the years 1436 and 1437, was followed by the greatest outbreak
of the plague the city had experienced since the disastrous epidemics of the
fourteenth century. Jan de Waal, rector of the convent of Saint Agnes from
1489 to 1531, wrote about his own time in his convent chronicle: ‘This town
Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England

2
(1995); Pierre-André Sigal, L’homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale (XIe–XIIe siècle)
(1985).
3
Michael Goodich, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth-Century. Private Grief
and Public Salvation (1995); David A. Flory, ‘The Social Uses of Religious Literature:
Challenging Authority in the Thirteenth-Century Marian Miracle’, Essays in Medieval
Studies 13 (1996): 61–9; Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, ed., ‘Miracles and Social Status in the
Middle Ages’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 19 (2010): 231–82.
Miracles and the Body Social 243
is harassed by plague, death and war, these are the worst times ever’.4 On the
other hand, Amersfoort’s economic position seems to have benefitted from the
setting up of the new devotion in 1444. For example, new fairs were inaugurated
in 1444 (accompanying the Procession of Our Lady) and 1478. Information
about the origins of the cult harks back to an account recorded in Jan de Wael’s
chronicles. Amersfoort’s miraculous Madonna was found in December 1444
by a maid-servant called Griet Albert Gysendochter. Her confessor, Jan van

Schoonhoven, arranged for its accommodation by the Marian fraternity of the
Chapel of Saint Job (Sint-Joostkapel) – later renamed Chapel of Our Lady – to
which it was carried in procession on 25 or 26 December.5 It immediately began
working miracles. Over more than a century, these miracles were recorded with
much diligence.
The original folios that contained the miracle collection of Our Lady of
Amersfoort are untraceable, nevertheless three copies have survived.6 Two
quasi-duplicates, both written in the late sixteenth century are preserved in
Amersfoort.7 A seventeenth-century copy, once property of the Antwerp Jesuit
Heribert Rosweyde (1569–1629), is kept in Brussels.8 Besides a chronicle
about the miraculous statue’s finding and other notes concerning the history of
Amersfoort and its Marian devotion, the lion’s share of the Brussels manuscript
consists of 542 miracle stories dated between 1444 and 1545. Amersfoort’s
miracle notation was clearly concentrated in the first seven years of the existence
of the cult: 409 of the 542 miracle stories were recorded between 1444 and 1451.
4
‘Omtrent deese jaren was bijnae overall sware peste en sterfte, oock groote
oorlogen, maar dat alderswaerste de dijre tijd’, cited in J.H.P. Kemperink, ‘Johan van Ingen:
geschiedenissen’, Archief voor de geschiedenis van het aartsbisdom Utrecht 74 (1957): 1–155,
at 50.
5
The brothers of the chapel of Our Lady’s claim for the tutelage over the cult is
evidenced by an inscription that is said to have ornamented the chapel door’s cross beam:
‘In the year of our Lord 1444, the image of Mary was found in the water and brought to
this place to be worshipped’. See Abraham van Bemmel, Beschrijving van de stad Amersfoort,
Volume 1 (Utrecht, 1760), 134.
6
Kemperink (see notes 5 and 7) held the romanticized view that the medieval miracle
book was overused to such a degree that it had started to disintegrate and that it was therefore
copied by a considerate church servant.
7
Amersfoort, Oud-Katholieke parochie H. Gregorius, Miracle Book (an edition of this
copy, though not flawless, appeared in: Lukkenaer, Mirakelboeck Onser Liever Vrouwen ’t
Amersfoert (1946); Archief Eemland, Amersfoort, Parochie Sint Franciscus Xaverius of Soli
Deo Gloria, 0169.01, nr. 432.
8
Rosweyde later became notorious for initiating the critical study of hagiographical
sources that was adopted by Jean Bollandus after his death and which would turn out to be
the basis of the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum. The Brussels manuscript seems to be a copy of
the ‘old catholic’ manuscript, with marginal and interlinear insertions and corrections, of
which some possibly by Rosweyde.
After a complete downturn in the 1450s (seven entries), registration seems to

be taken up again in the 1460s (32) and settled around a steady average of 27
entries per decade in the 1470s (29), 1480s (21) and 1490s (31). The register’s
continuity ends with a handful of entries in the first decennium of the sixteenth
century (6), only to flare up again in 1544 and 1545.9 The lacuna of the 1450s
could be linked to the plague outbreaks between 1455 and 1459, which might
have hindered devotional practices and, by extension, miracle notation.

During the high Middle Ages, contemporary miracula were first and
foremost the product of monastic milieus, but from the second half of the
fourteenth century on, urban fraternities began to document vernacular
registers of miracles ascribed to their patron saints. Registers of vernacular
miracle accounts were the textual exponents of a late medieval flowering
of urban religious culture and the normalization of city bureaucratization.
Urban fraternities kept miracle registers as instruments for the propaganda
and prestige of their cult, to acquire episcopal admission, obtain indulgences
and hence boost their financial incomes.
Scholars generally agree that miracle stories are the literary testimonies of
a ‘devotional’, reciprocal communication between lay people and the clergy.
Miraculés reported their experience at the shrine where their testimonies were
registered by notaries or sacristans. These ‘experienced’ miracles – interpreted,
manipulated, modelled by registration and editing processes – were
preached during liturgical and para-liturgical practices and offered the cultic
community a rich repertoire of motives that they could familiarize themselves
with and subsequently apply as a referential framework to interpret their
own experiences as religious and miraculous. This process of reception and
appropriation resulted in a multiple authorship of the miraculous discourse
in which both ‘the miraculé, the hagiographer and the cultic community were
engaged’.10 The historical value of the miracle account is precisely ‘to be gained
from examining it as the product of communal participation in a process’.11
They reproduced ideas and attitudes that were shared by different members of
the same cultic community and in this way they can tell us something about
communal notions of sociability.
Thiers, De Amersfoortse Vrouwevaart, 60–61, offers possible explanations.

9
Goodich, ‘Filiation and Form in the Late Medieval Miracle Story’, 306. Aaron
10
J. Gurevich, ‘Oral and written culture of the Middle Ages’, 64, describes the circulation of
a miracle story as a passing through the ‘preventive censorship of society’ so that it becomes
accepted by it.
11
Simon Yarrow, Saints and their Communities. Miracle Stories in Twelfth-century
England (2009), 14.
The Social Language of Miracle Accounts
In analysing the 542 miracle accounts of Amersfoort’s register,12 I have adopted

a ‘maximalist’ interpretation of the definition of sociability. In such a maximalist
approach, caring for the infirmi should not be understood ‘medically’, or ‘socially’
per se, but might also include, for example, bystanders helping a blind man pass
over bridge, brothers in jail praying together, telling a neighbour about the
miraculous capacities of Our Lady of Amersfoort, or joining friends for dinner
after a successful pilgrimage.13 Obviously, many of these references responded to
literary conventions, but the important point is that they imply, contain or are
expressed in terms of social interactions: 329 accounts contain representations
of, or references to, social behaviour and social interaction. The following analysis
will use several parameters: (1) social interaction in familial and extra-familial
contexts, (2) social behaviour as manifested in representations of encounters
with the supernatural through visionary experience and (3) demonic possession.
The rationale behind these choices is inspired by the critique of the application
of quantitative or sociographical models to the interpretation of miracle
registers. Simon Yarrow, for instance, argued for methodologies which ‘convey
the full cultural value of the miraculous as experienced by its participants’.14
I will therefore sometimes make use of the (pseudo-)serial nature of the register,
but focus especially on the ‘subliminal social language’15 used in a selection of
themes that imply ‘experience’ (the familial, the divine, the demonic).
12
Source references will consist of a reference to the Brussels manuscript and an
indication of the numbering used in the Lukkenaer and the forthcoming edition by Ludo
Jongen, Dick de Boer and Lianne van Beek. I am grateful to Ludo Jongen for sharing their
work in progress with me.
13
All this data was entered into a database together with other relevant information
(nature of affliction, age, gender, provenance and so on). The lion’s share of the miracle entries
does not provide us with any information about the supplicant’s age, name or profession.
14
Yarrow, Saints and their Communities, 9–10, quotation at 9.
15
Occasionally certain types of social interaction are explicitly thematized and
moralized, such as in the account of a handsome young man who was flirting with young
girls and stole a purse belonging to one of the girls. He was arrested, imprisoned and to
be executed by hanging, but Our Lady of Amersfoort saved his life and he then entered a
monastery (KBR 8179–80, fol. 33r (nr. 224)). There is also the account of a group of seven
youngsters drinking and talking blasphemously in a guesthouse. One of them (‘the one who
was mocking the Virgin the most’) started choking and could only be saved by a collective
prayer to Our Lady and a promise never ever to slander again (KBR 8179–80, fol. 19r (nr.
67)). By ‘subliminal social language’ I mean the references to collective and social (inter-)
action (praying or vowing together, intermediary praying or vowing, showing empathy,
making pilgrimages in group, the mentioning of neighbours and bystanders, spending
time together and so on) that are used in the narrative without them being the subject of,
The first paragraph will touch upon the representation of social attitudes in
the context of the nuclear family, the community, and will show how emotional
language reflects these attitudes. A large proportion of miracle stories take
place in the context of the nuclear family and this context therefore deserves
elaboration. In the above-mentioned selection, children are most often
indicated as protagonists in need of care (144, of which 34 boys, 19 girls and 88
unknown): 107 accounts mention adult female protagonists and 80 male ones.16
Among those 144 infant beneficiaries, no fewer than 42 different categories of
afflictions or accidents can be noted. In order to try to bring out the differences
in parental roles, it is interesting to identify who is described as the petitioner
on behalf of a child in need. A vow was a ‘powerful moment of agency’ and a
function of spiritual and social authority within the household.17 It is a critical
moment in the narrative structure of the miracle account.18 An unmistakable
result of an analysis of the vows by parents described in the Amersfoort register
is that women clearly outstripped men as intercessors: mothers acted far more
than men as intermediaries between the worldly and the sacred in seeking
help for their offspring (49 vs. 17).19 The American scholar Leigh Ann Craig,
who studied miracle accounts written outside the Netherlands between 1300
and 1500, argued that such representation of women’s roles in the miracles
she studied served as an extension of their ‘normative’ social roles. When they
sought out the saints, women were far more likely than men to be acting in a
caregiving capacity: ‘women were able to seek shrines and to request miracles so
long as their needs and actions were understood to fit into the roles within the
household as much as possible’.20 One entry tells the story of a woman in Zwolle,
or essential to, the miracle account. I do not claim that this ‘subliminal’ language was used
deliberately, only that it does imply a certain representation of social attitudes.
16
In two accounts we are not told the gender. As mentioned earlier, most of the
miracles were registered before the 1450s, and over time, as a stacked-percentage chart would
show, only small shifts in these proportions occur towards the 1550s.
17
Craig, Wandering Women, 106.
18
For reflections on the nature and evolution of making vows see, among others:
André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. D’après les
procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (1988), 521–9; Craig, Wandering
Women, 106–14; Christian Krötzl, ‘Miracles au tombeau – miracles à distance. Approches
typologiques’, in Miracle et karama, Denise Aigle (2000), 557–76; Robert Maniura,
Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century. The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of
Częstochowa (2004), 105–8.
19
For mothers as initiators of asking for the intercession of the saint, see Didier Lett,
L’enfant des miracles: enface et société au Moyen Age, XIIe–XIIIe siècle (1997), 165–78; Ronald
C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (1997).
20
Craig, Wandering Women, 97. See also Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles, and
Daily Life. The Evidence of Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (2009), 114–24.
46 miles north-east of Amersfoort, who was mother to three young children.

In the span of one single day, one of her children fell from the attic in their
home and died instantaneously, another had both hands bitten off by a pig and
a third was stabbed in the throat by one of the neighbours’ children. The mother
suffered a mental breakdown and was therefore purportedly brought all the way
to the Brabantine pilgrimage shrine of Saint Dymphna in Geel.21 However, after
the pilgrimage to Geel turned out to be unsuccessful, she and her friends turned
to Our Lady of Amersfoort as a last resort, a manoeuvre that did prove to be
successful.22 Such a psychological response to the loss of a child could be seen as
an amplified documentation of a general stereotype of the mother-as-caregiver
that resulted from the analysis. One could easily contrast numerous examples
of emotional maternal behaviour with more pragmatic patriarchal attitudes.23
The following example, however, demonstrates that fathers as protagonists
were also attributed with familial-sociable features, in this case expressed
as the physiological measure of an emotional shock.24 A man from Haarlem,
a small centre of cloth industry in Holland 12 miles west of Amsterdam, had
died in England (where he most probably travelled as a wool trader or textile
merchant). When his father learned that his son, ‘whom he loved deeply’, had
died, he was struck by an uncontrollable shaking of the head, a frenzy that lasted
for three weeks. Nobody was capable of helping him, until he was told about
the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Amersfoort, to whom he immediately
addressed a supplication. He was cured after two days and came to Amersfoort
to offer gifts and report on his cure.25 Despite a numerical predominance of
the female caring individuals registered, emotional responses to children’s
misadventures clearly did not belong to a privileged maternal code of conduct.
Moreover, according to as many Amersfoort miracle accounts, parents made
vows or performed pilgrimages together (48). At the same time, references to
extended family members are virtually absent: only two mentions are made of
extended family members having another relation than parent-child or marital,
namely brothers (nr. 60, 170, 320, 423) and a niece (nr. 320). This points towards
the pre-eminence of the nuclear family and corresponds to the image also revealed
21
Some 120 miles from Zwolle. Geel’s cultic infrastructure was famously adapted to
accommodate patients suffering psychosomatic and neurological afflictions such as epilepsy,
madness, rage and demonic possession. Other findings also attest to the international fame
of Geel’s Saint Dympna cult: Corien Glaudemans, Om die wrake wille. Eigenrichting, veten
en verzoening in laat-middeleeuws Holland en Zeeland (2004), 206.
22
KBR 8179–80, fols 30r–v (nr. 201).
23
Illustrative in this respect is account KBR 8179–80, fol. 21r (nr. 89), in which a
father goes out in search of a doctor to cure his nine-year-old son from a kidney stone, while
the mother stays home to pray to Our Lady of Amersfoort.
24
For similar findings, see Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life, 80–87.
25
KBR 8179–80, fols 38v–39r (nr. 282).
by recent research: the demographic settings of late medieval towns favoured

the dominance of the nuclear family (spouses and children), as opposed to the
extended family (nephews and nieces, sons and daughters-in-law, half-brothers
and half-sisters, cousins, grandchildren and godchildren and so on). Katherine
Lynch envisions communities as inclusive networks in which friends, friends of
friends and even mere acquaintances could be as valuable as family members to
those facing the perennial challenges of urban life.26 The miracle register of the
fraternity of Our Lady of Amersfoort presents the nuclear family as the infirmus’
most direct caregiver. The broader social context in which it fulfilled this function
is inhabited by anonymous bystanders, not extended family members.
Some of its miracle accounts mention extra-familial social interaction in the
course of the narratives. One miracle relates how a ‘good man’ from Campen
sat by the bell tower and was having a drink with other ‘good men’ when all
of a sudden he became dumb,27 while another miracle reports that ‘when a
man from West Delft joined a group of good men in a bar to drink on Saint
Agnes’ day, he suffered a stroke which paralysed his tongue, his right arm and
foot’.28 People notifying, advising, speaking to each other about Our Lady of
Amersfoort, and informing each other about the miraculous healings that had
occurred thanks to her benevolence, are obviously part of a literary topos within
the genre illustrating how people from different places were informed about the
existence of the shrine as a function of the boundless nature of the saint’s virtus,
but all variations imply human interaction. Various miracle stories mention that
‘someone spoke about the great miracles that occurred daily at the shrine of
Our Lady of Amersfoort’,29 or that ‘people from Amersfoort who were also on
board [of a ship] informed them about the grace of Our Lady in Amersfoort’30
or even dictated: ‘then someone urged her to address a vow to Our Lady’.31
These indistinct identifications suggest that these figures were unfamiliar with
the protagonists of the miracle story, and hence evoked microscopic literary
depictions of peaceful encounters with strangers.
In 59 accounts colleagues, friends, neighbours or coincidental passers-by
play a significant role in the resolution of the crisis.32 People could apparently (or
Katherine Lynch, Individuals, Families and Communities in Europe (2003).

26
KBR 8179–80, fol. 27v (nr. 168).

27
28
KBR 8179–80, fol. 42r (nr. 319).
29
KBR 8179–80, fol. 14r (nr. 13).
30
KBR 8179–80, fol. 32v (nr. 221).
31
KBR 8179–80, fol. 28r (nr. 177).
32
See Christian Krötzl, ‘Parent-Child Relations in Medieval Scandinavia According to
Scandinavian Miracle Collections’, Scandinavian Journal of History 14 (1989): 21–37, at 31–2;
and Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life, 75–80 for an analyses of, respectively,
Nordic miracles and depositions of canonization processes in its references to solidarity and
neighbourly help. In 22 of the 59 accounts, their assistance is related to children in need.
at least the idea existed that they could) rely on a broad communal, though often
anonymous, network of friends, neighbours and passers-by to help and comfort
them in critical situations. Again, the extended family is virtually absent. It was
friends and neighbours who convinced the parents of a child with kidney stones
to consult a doctor, who accompanied a miscarrying Zegveld woman in her
prayer and vow, who went out looking for a lost girl near Nordhorn in 1463,
who tried to bailout a friend imprisoned in Gouda and brought a distraught man
from Zeeland before the image of Our Lady in Amersfoort to have him cured.33
It is possible that grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and other members of
the ‘extended’ family were left anonymous, merged into the faceless crowds of
supporters. But it is significant that their assistance is not explicitly mentioned,
whereas that of the nuclear family members is. What is explicitly mentioned
is precisely the facelessness of the bystanders. This could be more than mere
coincidence. Historians working in the wake of sociologists like Putnam and
Bourdieu have argued that informal ties could be extremely important in serving
pragmatic and less altruistic goals. An extensive social network could have helped
individuals to survive all kinds of hardship, whether caused by grave illness,
disability or unforeseen calamities. This, moreover, confirms Peter Laslett’s
‘nuclear-hardship’ hypothesis that in societies in which nuclear households were
the norm, principally northern Europe, people were more likely to depend upon
larger ‘collectivities’ in society.34
As illustrated by some of the above-mentioned examples, social interaction
is often accompanied by (or mediated through) emotional behaviour.35 Firstly,
it is striking to note that what we could designate as social ‘altruistic’ emotions
outnumber individual ‘self-reflective emotions’.36 Self-reflective emotions
(emotional responses to one’s own affliction or troubled situation) are registered
only on few occasions; ‘fear’ is the only emotion that is used intransitively more
33
KBR 8179–80, fol. 20r (nr. 80), fol. 38v (nr. 278), fols 54–54v (nr. 426), fol. 47v (nr.
370) and fol. 24v (nr. 136) respectively.
34
Peter Laslett, ‘Family, Kinship, and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-
Industrial Europe: A Consideration of “the Nuclear-Hardship” Hypothesis’, Continuity and
Change 3 (1988): 153–75.
35
Especially since the American historian Barbara Rosenwein’s valuable contributions
to the field, the study of ‘emotions’ is indissolubly interlinked with the communal context in
which they were expressed, constructed and expected. See Barbara Rosenwein, ‘Worrying
about emotions in history’, American Historical Review 107 (2002): 821–45; idem.,
Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2006).
36
Some of the scholars who have used miracle collections and have undertaken more
extensive analyses are, amongst others: Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracle, and Daily Life;
Nicole Archambeau, ‘Tempted to kill: miraculous consolation for a mother after the death
of her infant daughter’, in Emotions and Health, 1200–1700, ed. Elena Carrera (2013),
47–66.
frequently than transitively (12 vs. 4). Most often, transitive emotions express
sociability. Parents, children, friends and bystanders ‘cry’ (wenen, hueilen, mit
(groeten) tranen in nr. 475, 517), ‘are sad’ (rouwich in nr. 309 and 310; droewich,
droeffenis in nr. 306, 426, 428), ‘feel pity’ (jamer in nr. 78, 89, 212, 292, 344, 361,
401, 488, 494, 496, 500, 516, 518, 522), ‘are sorry’ or show empathy by having
‘compassion’ (medelieden, medelijden, compunctie in nr. 321, 393, 423) for the
misfortune of the other, or are ‘consoling’ one another (troesten in nr. 500). People
‘joyfully’ join together to go on a pilgrimage (nr. 194, 213, 218, 239, 241) and share
moments of panic and moments of relief. These are all marks of the communal as
opposed to the individual. In the line of Barbara Rosenwein’s approach to emotional
discourse in medieval texts, such emotional representations both expressed and
moulded emotional communities, ‘groups in which people adhere to the same
norms of emotional expression, value – or devalue – the same or related emotions’.37
A second parameter that I would like to invoke in distinguishing underlying

social language is the social implications of descriptions of visionary perceptions
of the supernatural. These phenomena are described as visual or auditory
apparitions in dreams, ranging from heavenly lights appearing to a desperate
ship crew caught in a storm at sea as a herald of an imminent rescue, to sweet
inner voices guiding prisoners to the right escape route from their prison
cells.38 Such visionary accounts are mentioned in 27 miracle stories. More male
protagonists (20) are noted to have had ‘visionary experiences’ than female
protagonists (seven). Overall, the visionary incidents tend to display a certain
gendered pattern. Men exclusively receive visionary communications when
they are themselves confronted with problems, often finding themselves in
juridical difficulties, tricked into an ambush by a gang of robbers or receiving
supernatural assistance in escaping from a dungeon. Research has shown that
female characters in miracle stories in general either tend to be visionaries in
an intermediate capacity (performing a caregiving role in the service of their
children or their husband) or function as demoniacs, possessed by demons.39
Both literary ‘roles’ can be interpreted as functions of a normative social ‘code’
women were expected to adhere to. The following miracle story typically
illustrates the function of women as intermediaries between the household and
the supernatural. A man had been arrested and imprisoned in Breda and was
awaiting his execution.40 That same night, his spouse received a dream vision that
Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, 2.
37
Framed in the influential Augustinian tripartite typology consisting of ‘corporeal’,

38
‘spiritual’ and ‘intellectual’ types of visions, visionary interventions described in the

Amersfoort miracle register are best categorized as spiritual visions.
39
Craig, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle
Ages (2009), esp. chapter 5.
40
KBR 8179–80, fol. 27r (nr. 164).
told her to make a vow to Our Lady of Amersfoort in order to free her husband
from his dungeon. This and other miracles confirm the normative, stereotypical
roles that have often been attributed to female protagonists and which are in line
with a general, gendered pattern of social visionary incidents in other miracle
registers.41 Yet the Amersfoort miracle register does not completely conform
to these previous observations. First, female visionaries do not only ‘become’
visionaries when their intermediary or caregiving obligations require them to do

so, but also because of their personal suffering. An example that can be offered
here is the story about an inhabitant of the city of Groningen who was suffering
from a severe case of dropsy, with her belly swollen up ‘larger than it had been
when she was pregnant’, her navel ‘jutting out at least five centimetres’. No doctor
could remedy her disorder and she turned to Our Lady of Amersfoort for help
through intense prayer. At night she imagined a young lady coming to her and
untying the bandages that were applied by the doctors. When she woke up, the
lady had disappeared.42 In this account, the female visionary protagonist is not
presented as a purely solicitous individual, but as a protagonist in her own right.43
The Amersfoort stories about demonic meddling in human affairs, just like its
visionary narratives, do not really inform us on the spiritual ideas and practices
regarding visionary perception, nor do they offer spiritual teachings; they
were, I would argue, deliberately understood or applied as an edifying tool to
rebuke socially immoral behaviour. The register documents 28 cases of demonic
intercession. ‘The devil’, Robert Scribner wrote in one of his essays, ‘represented
and occasioned spiritual, moral, social, and material disorder in the natural
world’.44 So is the case in the following example. In Werkendam near Gorkum
a young man took a break from the irrigation works he was performing on his
fields and he went into his house.45 There he found his child crying in its cradle
and his wife nowhere to be found. This situation must have angered him because
the moment his wife reappeared he drew his knife to threaten her. He grabbed a
jug of beer and left the house to go back to the field where his companions were
waiting for him. When he climbed over a garden fence, a demon appeared to him
and offered him a hand, saying: ‘my friend, don’t be sad, I know where you can
find plenty of money!’ The man, frightened, hurried on to his companions. Then,
41
Jonas Van Mulder, ‘Lieve Jehan, goede vrient. Visioenen in het mirakelboek van
Halle’, Ons Geestelijk Erf: driemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de vroomheid in
de Nederlanden, 81 (2010): 311–38, at 324–7.
42
KBR 8179–80, fol. 42r (nr. 318).
43
On the other hand, it must be said that male visionaries never obtain their visionary
guidance as caregivers.
44
Robert W. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the Disenchantment of
the World’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993): 475–94, at 479.
45
KBR 8179–80, fols 37r–v (nr. 265).
suddenly, a madness came over him, ‘as if he were out of his mind, or possessed’
(als een vuijt zijne sinne en beseten), and it took all seven of his companions to
overpower him and take him inside the house. Only when he was brought before
the statue of Our Lady of Amersfoort was he released from the devil – his frenzy
by then identified and diagnosed as demonic possession. This entry about the
‘cure’ of demonic possession by the statue of Our Lady of Amersfoort elaborates
on two features that conflict with desirable social behaviour: aggressive domestic
behaviour (the man threatening his wife) and self-enrichment (thematized by the
devil’s lucrative proposal). Another interesting account in this respect relates how
a Dordrecht citizen and member of the local Saint-Nicolas guild became possessed
by a demon after having failed to honour Our Lady of Amersfoort by means of a
pilgrimage following a cure he had received and after he had furiously declined
a painting which he had ordered but which did not satisfy him.46 He became
angry and aggressive towards the painter. His fury was ‘fierce’ (seer qualicke) and
he slipped into demonic possession. Strikingly, not his neglect in fulfilling his
devotional duty is designated as the immediate cause of his demonic misadventure,
but his anger with the painter who had delivered a disappointing work: the vice of
anger is punished by God with demonic intervention.
As Sari Katajala-Peltomaa has convincingly shown in relation to accounts
of demonic possession in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century canonization
trials, possession could exemplify the violation of social normative codes and
not necessarily punishment for religious deviancy.47 My reading of the above-
mentioned examples offers further confirmation of her analysis but also adds
the nuance that demonic possession does not only lead to a certain type of
behaviour that can be qualified as a disruption of social norms and conduct,
but that possession is related causally to the behaviour displayed by the
protagonist before demonic invasion. Amersfoort’s miracle register shows that
the stereotypical medieval female stock character personifying moral weakness,
as well as the interconnectedness between demonic possession and the feminine
sex and women’s roles, needs some reconsideration. The miracle collection
of Amersfoort shows that both women and (actually, especially) men were
considered to be apt to star in these demonic moralizing tales. ‘Gender’ does not
seem to be the qualifying denominator and the idea of good social behaviour
seems to have been something independent from gendered qualifications. The
demonological discourse in the miracle collection of Our Lady of Amersfoort is
employed to emphasize norms of social behaviour.
KBR 8179–80, fol. 42r (nr. 317). For earlier, Scandinavian examples, see Christian
46
Krötzl’s article in this volume.

47
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘A Good Wife? Demonic Possession and Discourses of
Gender in Late Medieval Culture’, in Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds
Marianna Muravyeva and Raisa Maria Toivo (2013), 73–88.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have showed that the miracle accounts documented by

the fraternity of Our Lady of Amersfoort construct and instruct its cultic
community as regards social attitudes towards the sick, those in danger or
in need. When we take explicit and implicit references to social interaction
(‘subliminal social language’) together, it becomes evident that the Amersfoort

miracle collection offers considerably more data relating to social attitudes than
to devotional pedagogics. However, while entries about devotional beliefs and
practices, such as visionary encounters with the divine and demonic possession,
offer few instructions on how to cope with or react to them, they do convey
social messages on a more subtle level. This subliminal social language stresses
the act of helping and the attitude of altruism. This ‘altruistic’ sociable attitude
should be understood against the backdrop of the period of disasters as well
as economic opportunities, in which citizens were confronted with constant
interruptions and disruptions of their social routine. Future research could
investigate whether the social language used in other late medieval miracle
registers likewise reflects cultic circumstances and dynamics. Meanwhile, this
chapter has offered a reflection on the dynamics and interactions between
late medieval cultic text production and the shaping of community and
communal attitudes by urban confraternities. Benedict Anderson’s influential
Imagined Communities states that ‘urban rituals confirmed the self-conscious
and formal articulation of urban communities as “moral persons”, and that
these rituals symbolised and effectuated the formation of the community and
the establishment of the community’s law’.48 This corresponds very well to the
dynamics of vernacular miraculous accounts: they are both a reflection of the
community’s social behaviour and a medium for modelling that behaviour. This
‘constructedness’ is an essential part in managing communities or, as Katherine
Lynch writes, ‘communities are not just “there”, but are the product of conscious
efforts to invent and maintain them’.49 These contemporary miracles were part
of such an effort and offered models of behaviour that, through preaching, had
the ability to permeate the social fabric of the devotee’s life.
48
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (1991).
49
Lynch, Individuals, 14.

Chapter 15
Saints, Healing and Communities
in the Later Middle Ages: On Roles
and Perceptions
Christian Krötzl
Which perceptions, roles and forms of behaviour were related to illness, cure,
care and healing in medieval everyday life, in various local communities and
social layers? What were the reasons causing an illness? Who was given an active
role in the process of cure, care and healing?
It is very rare that the preserved sources from medieval Europe can give us
anything more than sparse evidence to answer these questions. The collections of
posthumous miracles (miracula post mortem, that is, after the death of a saint) are
among the few exceptions to offer suitable source material for research on these
issues. When looking at the motivations for undertaking a pilgrimage to a shrine
or making a vow to saint, which are mentioned in these miracle collections, we
can easily observe that physical and mental illness, disease and injuries constitute
the overwhelming majority all over Europe, numbering around 80–90 per cent
of all cases.1 The reality of the narration in a modern sense is here of minor
importance only; the key issue is how the actions and forms of behaviour were
described and depicted.
Which actors do we find mentioned in these sources? A figure appearing
regularly in miracle narratives is the demon, causing various types of disease
and illness, mostly linked to mental health. The role model is clearly taken
1
See Ronald Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England
(1995); Pierre-André Sigal, L’homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale (1985); André
Vauchez, La sainteté en Occiden aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (1988); Christian Krötzl,
Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag. Formen des Verhaltens im skandinavischen Mittelalter (1994);
Didier Lett, Un procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Essai d’histoire sociale (2008); Sari
Katajala-Peltomaa, Gender, Miracles and Daily Life (2009); Christian Krötzl, ‘How to
choose a Saint. On Propagation, Advice and Decision-Making in Medieval Communities’, in
Agiografia e culture popolari. Hagiography and Popular Cultures. In Ricordo di Pietro Boglioni,
ed. Paolo Golinelli (2012), 371–87. For a general overview on the medieval Cult of Saints
see also Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers
from the Martyrs to the Reformation (2013).
from biblical texts, but adapted in an interesting way to medieval surroundings

and circumstances. Demons could appear in visions or dreams, but also while
the person was awake. They could be disguised as women, wearing traditional
clothing of the region, luring a boy into the woods.2 To a young woman the
demon appeared in the form of a ‘horrible’ boy of 12.3
Demons often took the form of an animal. A six-year-old girl in a fifteenth-
century miracle narrative reported to have seen a terrifying black hen in

the oven, and every time the hen came out from the oven, she got a fit.4 In
a miracle story of St Bridget of Sweden two demons were even interacting
with each other. A boy of 10 had been tormented for six years by a demon,
whereupon another demon appeared in the form of black dog, asking his ‘dear
colleague’ to leave the boy. This he did through his mouth, in the form of a
big and terrifying snake, to take then the appearance of a goat and jumping
into the nearby lake.5 Other types of animal disguises mentioned are horses,
wolves, dogs and snakes.6
Threats and insults by demons are mentioned frequently but we find more
concrete actions also, such as demons entering a woman and devouring her
from inside.7 A youngster, who had appeared for two days to be dead, told that
he had been surrounded by black birds, which threatened to suffocate him
in a terrible way.8 Most of the demons were described and seen only by the
2
Passio et miracula B. Olavi, ed. F. Metcalfe (1881), 107–8: duas mulieres e latere
venientes, illius provincie feminis cultu et specie. On the interaction between demons and
saints see Peter Dinzelbacher, ‘Der Kampf der Heiligen mit den Dämonen’, in Settimane di
studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo XXXVI (Spoleto, 1989), 647–95. For
further discussion on community, social behaviour, and miracles curing demonic possession,
see Jonas Van Mulder’s article in this volume, esp. pp. 250–52
3
Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte, ed. Isaak Collijn (1924), 120: apparuit
ei ut puer teterrimus duodecim annorum.
4
Processus seu negocium canonizacionis b. Katherine de Vadstenis, ed. Isaak Collijn
(1942), 196: respondit, quod in fornace parentum suorum sedet una nigra gallina horribilis et
quociens ipsa de fornaca egreditur, tociens dixit se ab eadem terribiliter cruciari.
5
Acta et processus, 141–2: decem annorum, filius […] invasus est a diabolo, a quo per
sex annos crudelissime vexabatur […] Nocte vero media inter sabbatum et dominicam apparuit
ei demon in specie nigri canis et tangens pede pectus demoniaci dixit humana voce: ‘Exi hinc,
socie carissime, alioquin in brevi maximum scandalum paciemur’. Quo dicto exiit demon per os
demoniaci quasi serpens magnus et horribilis et post pauca factus ut hircus cum magno impetu
precipitavit se in profundum stagni monasterio adiacentis.
6
Ibid., 120–23.
7
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum. Novam editinomen criticam, ed. M.C. Gertz (1908),
p. 347: statim insiluit in eam spiritus malignus vehementer discerpens eam.
8
Scriptores Rerum Svecicarum medii aevi II:1, ed. Ericus Michael Fant (1850), 282:
circumdatum multitudine nigrarum avium, quae quasi in speciem corvorum, nitebantur
eundem horribiliter suffocare.
Saints, Healing and Communities in the Later Middle Ages 257
main person but sometimes their actions were visible to other persons too. The
stomach of a girl grew to a huge size and moved by itself, as family members
saw and reported.9
A young girl was shaken by a demon, and then thrown to the ground and
against a wall. Later, when her husband had her transported to the shrine of St
Bridget in Vadstena, the demon attacked her again, as well as her husband and
other persons of the company.10

Which role was given to the saint? Which were the actions allegedly
performed by the saint at his shrine? Often we find just the mention of a voice
which could be heard coming from somewhere. A woman in thirteenth-century
Denmark, seeking help at the shrine, was apparently so exhausted that she fell
asleep during mass. Suddenly she heard a voice urging her to wake up. When her
fellow pilgrim denied having uttered anything, she understood that the voice had
come from the saint himself.11 A splendour of light is also frequently associated
with the appearance of a saint, as in the case of a Norwegian Cistercian, described
as deaf-mute. Amidst a crowd of pilgrims he saw in a vision a very bright light,
followed by the shining appearance of the saint himself.12
The most frequent form of action by the saint was to make the sign of the
cross with his hand and fingers on or above the injured part of the body. This
could be accompanied by a touch with the thumb, as in a Swedish narrative from
the thirteenth century.13 Saint Eric of Denmark is described as having touched
9
Acta et processus, 130: secunda die pasche invasit diabolus et per integrum mensem bis
vel ter quolibet die crudelissime vexabat, ita quod venter eius supra pectus usque ad faciem eius
videbatur se erigere. Similarly in the case of a boy of 10 years, ibid., 141–2.
10
Ibid., 120–23: venit ad eam diabolus vehementer iratus et percussit eam ita valenter,
quod cecidit in terram et connexit ambo genua sua […] eam tam acriter vexabat, commovebat
et collidebat ad parietes, ubi jacuit vel sedebat, ac traxit per crines membratimque discerpsit,
ut omnes videntes eam mirarentur, quomodo in una hora tantas penas vivens pati posset […]
maritus suus cum amicis suis paravit se, ut transferret eam Wastenas, et cum iter arriperent,
cucurrit cum eis diabolus […] arripuit unum per pedes et collidebat eum ad glaciem, alterum
vero percussit in dentes cum instrumento, quo minabat jumenta, ita quod sanguis efflueret
[…] in conspectu omnium astancium arripuit eam diabolus per pedes elevans in sublime et fecit
horribiliter cadere in vehiculum […] arripuit eam diabolus per pedes volens extrahere eam […]
vexabat eam et collidebat eam ad parietem.
11
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 366: audivit vocem dicentem sibi: ‘Mulier surge!’ […]
Excitata respexit ad mulierem, que stabat ad tergum eius, et interrogavit eam, quid sibi diceret.
Cui illa: ‘Nichil’. Intelligens hanc vocem venisse desuper exultavit uberius.
12
Passio et miracula, 114: visa est sibi lux permaxima inter turbam insolito fulgore
clarescere, quam et subsequitur vir vultu et habitu premisse claritatis splendorem preferens.
13
Scriptores rerum Svecicarum II:1, 278: vulnerum suorum plagas pollice dextrae manus
tangens, crucis impresso signaculo consignavit. A similar case on ibid., 308: me palpavit, et
statim cum tumore dolor me reliquit.
the eyes of a blind woman with a feather,14 and Catherine of Vadstena appeared
to a severely ill nun, touching her arms and feet. When she woke up on the
following morning, she found that she was cured.15 Catherine could successfully
heal a nobleman’s battle wound by touching his injured arm.16
Various kinds of ointments are also mentioned regularly17 and sometimes a
saint only moved his hands as if applying an ointment. According to a miracle
of Saint Bridget of Sweden she touched the arms and legs of a crippled woman
as if applying an ointment. After a blasphemy, a man was first struck so severely
that he wanted to take his life. Saint Bridget appeared however in a vision and
ordered him to extend his tongue, where she applied an ointment and cured
him again.18
Punitive miracles after a blasphemy were generally a category where the
activity of the saint was clearly visible. An unspecified severe illness following a
blasphemous utterance was regularly mentioned in these cases.19 Saint Bridget
was already a contested person during her lifetime which led to a comparatively
large number of punitive miracles in her posthumous collection.20 A typical case
is that of a burgher of Söderköping who declared in 1374: ‘I do not care for
that old woman and her relics’, after which he became insane, wounding himself,
biting his fingers and tormenting himself in other ways.21 Of 11 punitive miracles
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 443: sibi apparente et oculos cum penna liniente.
14
Processus seu negocium, 102: videbatur sibi sequenti nocte in sompnis, quomodo quedam
15
domina albis induta vestibus membra sua ex pestilencia infecta huicinde attrectavit et dixit
se vocari Katerinam filiam beate Birgitte, quibus peractis sequenti die sana et incolumis ab
egritudinis lecto surrexit.
16
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Cod. Skokloster 15, Vita Katherine, fol. 120r.
17
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 441: apparens ei iterum cum unguento et ungens curavit
ipsum.
18
Acta et processus, 150: blasphemans […] arreptus est subito tanta infirmitate, quod se
nec ad dextram nec ad sinistram movere poterat et tanto tedio effectus est, ut eciam sibi immittere
vellet manum propriam ad exinguendam vitam. Cui persona reverendo habitu in sompno
apparens dixit: ‘Extende linguam et curaberis. Ego enim sum illa, quam blasphemasti’. Et
extendens homo linguam recepit quandam unccionem.
19
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 438: non credens sancti Erici miraculis […] infirmatus
ad mortem; Scriptores rerum Svecicarum II:1, 335: derisit et dixit: Si ille sanctus est, irascatur
mihi si potest. Sequenti vero nocte jacens in lectulo, nimio coepit cruciari tumore corporis et
dolore.
20
Acta et processus, 109–10, 112, 113, 115, 127, 128, 147–8, 150, 151.
21
Ibid., 109, 147: Quid michi de illa vetula et reliquijs suis […] cum virgis et baculis totum
corpus suum et capud percuciens miserabiliter wlneravit […] ex demencia sua digitos dentibus
mordens.
four led to insanity or epileptic fits.22 We also find suicide attempts,23 loss of
eyesight,24 severe pain in arms,25 as well as severe headache and various diseases.26
In most cases the punishment came immediately after the blasphemy and
could last for three days, five days or even half a year. Sometimes there was no
healing, as in a narrative of Eric of Denmark; a man, doubting his sanctity,
became first blind, then insane and died shortly afterwards.27 In blasphemy cases
the saint acted always as an invisible force, causing illness or injuries, but not
appearing directly or in disguise.
There are, however, some rare cases where the saint himself is ‘acting’ as a
healer. In the miracle collection of Olav from twelfth-century Norway, a boy with
paralysed feet had been brought by his mother and his brothers to Trondheim,
where they spent the night in the hospital near the cathedral. At midnight he
saw in a vision three men coming to the hospital and examining the patients, as
if they were doctors. Having arrived at his bed one of them made the sign of the
cross over his injured knees, breathed on them and put his hand on his forehead,
urging him to wake up because he had been healed.28
In the same collection we also find cases where the saint acted not only by
touching and breathing, but actually as a physician. A cleric, who had been
attracted by women and had several children, had come to the shrine to seek
help for his ‘weakness of the flesh’. After praying at the altar he fell asleep and
then a physician (medicus) appeared who revealed his identity as Saint Olav.
The medicus performed a very concrete action by cutting the nerves leading to
the procreational organ with a hot iron. On waking the cleric felt strong pain
and asked immediately for a warm bath but the operation had succeeded and he
22
Ibid., 113: morbo epilentico subito percussus cecidit. See also ibid., 109, 112, 127.
23
Ibid., 151: arreptus est subito tanta infirmitate, quod se nec ad sinistram movere potuerat
et tanto tedio effectus est, ut eciam sibi immittere vellet manum propriam ad extinguendam
vitam.
24
Ibid., 112: altero oculo privatus subito est.
25
Ibid., 115: dolore gravissimo in dextro brachio percussus est […] intollerabiliter
affligebatur.
26
Ibid., 128: inflacione et dolore capitis percussa est.
27
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 438: Karolus Kannae in Scania dixit: ‘Si rex Ericus est
sanctus, ervat michi oculos et faciat me furiosum’. Quod et factum est: quia cecus et amens et
propriam linguam dilacerans exspiravit.
28
Passio et miracula, 115–16: retrorsum contractos habebat pedes, ad ecclesiam beati
Olavi martiris a matre et fratribus est adductus […] Et cum deambulando ter universam domum
circuissent, ad lectulum, in quo contractus puer iacebat, de more solito pervenerunt […] Uno
autem eorum ad caput pueri, alio ad pedes consistente, tercius, statura brevis, decorus facie, cuius
splendidior erat aspectus, medius fuit […] Hic autem, cum super puerum medius staret, signum
crucis super genua eius fecit, et inclinans se in eadem insufflavit, manum vero super frontem eius
posuit, et excitavit illum, dicens: Ecce iam sanus factus es, noli dormire, surge velociter.
was freed from his difficulties.29 In another case Saint Olav healed the legs of a
crippled boy, who had fallen asleep at the altar.30 In yet another case a youngster,
who had been unjustly punished by cutting off his tongue, was healed by the saint,
who appeared to him and healed the tongue by extending the remaining part.31
These few examples from twelfth-century Norway are very peculiar; similar
cases, where the saint himself or herself ‘acts’ as a doctor or physician, performing
specific healing actions are so far not known in any other medieval miracle
collection. The backwardness of the region does not explain these features as
Trondheim was at the time no marginal place but fully integrated and connected
to European church politics and culture.
How do we have to imagine the range of healing activities at a medieval
shrine? Do we have clues for a wider range of methods than those described in
most of the written sources? A characteristic feature of nearly all hagiographic
sources throughout medieval Europe is the negative image given of doctors,
physicians and of medical care in general. The medications given were nearly
always described as inefficient at the very least, and the art of doctors or physicians
as useless and of no worth.32 Doctors appear regularly in the sources, but in most
cases only to confirm that they had been unable to give any help, as in a typical
case from fifteenth-century Sweden, where the physician declared the futility
of his art and refused therefore any involvement in the case.33 This is in line
with Canon Law regulations, which prescribe from the Fourth Lateran council
(1215) onwards, a ban on all kind of surgical treatment by priests and clerics.34
Ibid., 101–2: Diaconus […] in carnis fragilitatem lapsus multos filios generavit. Quanto
29
numerus filiorum succrevit, eo maiori deprimitur inopia. […] ante altare beati Olavi, licet
indignus, et in peccato perdurans, anxius prosternitur […] sopore tandem resolvitur. Et ecce
quidam in specie medici veniens, de nomine sciscitatus, eundem quem vocaverat Olavum se esse
asserens, dolentem nervum transfixit cauterio. Expergefactus itaque visionis horrore membrum,
quod ferro sompniaverat tactum, ignito sensit dolore respersum. Exinde calidum requirit
balneum, ut lenium saltem aquarum fomento tolerabiliter fieret mali vehementia. Quo dum
resideret, iuxta ventrem, ubi ferrum videbatur transfixum, solutus decidit nervus, cum quo et
facultas recessit peccandi.
30
Ibid., 102: contractus genibus […] At cum iuxta patrem ipse puer soporaretur, in sompnis
visus est sibi quidam vir tanto conamine plicatos artus extendere, quatenus, ut mitius ageret,
clamare cogeretur. Expergefactus autem a sompno sanus surrexit.
31
Ibid., 80: videt hominem statura mediocrem, aspectu decorum, qui propius accedens, et
manu sua os adolescentis aperiens, lingue truncate partem que remanserat tanta virtute extraxit
et extendit.
32
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 243: medicinas nil valentes.
33
Scriptores rerum Svecicarum III:2, 170: civis Scarensis […] Cirurgicus […] et quia
considerabat quod suis arte vel ingenio sibi prodesse non potuit, de causa sui se intromittere
noluit.
34
See Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid, Vol. VIII, ed. John Granlund (1956),
cols 420–23, and Vol. XI, ed. John Granlund (1956), cols 79–85.
A pilgrimage to a shrine, or a vow to a saint, combined with prayers, were

therefore the only measures which could be suggested by church authorities, at
least according to the regulations. This is however not the whole picture.
A ‘hospital near the church, which was dedicated to the cure of sick persons’,
is explicitly mentioned in connection to the aforementioned shrine of Saint
Olav in twelfth-century Norway,35 and scattered information on hospitals can
be found in connection with many shrines around medieval Europe. There

is, however, hardly any evidence for other than faith-healing methods used at
these places.
A peculiar case in this regard is Aebelholt in Denmark, the shrine of Saint
Wilhelm, abbot of Aebelholt. He was born in 1127 in Paris, became canon at
the Augustinian house of Sainte Geneviève, and was then called to Denmark in
1165 by the powerful bishop Absalon of Roskilde in order to reform the priory
of Eskilsö. In 1175 he moved to Aebelholt, where he became abbot and died in
1203. He was canonized in 1224 by Honorius III, based on a vita and a fairly
detailed miracle collection, dating between 1218 and 1224.36
From most shrines throughout Europe it is only these hagiographic sources
that we have at our disposal, but in this case there is more. The monastery was
abandoned and partially destroyed after the Reformation, and the site remained
free from buildings or roads. Archaeological excavations in the first half of the
twentieth century unearthed a large graveyard with well-preserved skeletons,
which could be analysed by experts in osteology.37 Remains of bigger wooden
buildings pointed to a hospital, close to the monastery buildings. An artificially
made small river flowed alongside them, where a bigger amount of smashed chars
of earthenware could be found, probably used for curative water, as well as coins
and amulets with runic inscriptions. In the graveyard and around the church
more than 760 medieval skeletons were found, both men (303), women (209)
and children (135); the graveyard was clearly not only for the monastery’s use.
Many of the skeletons show clear signs of chirurgical treatments and operations,
which correspond to the most advanced surgical knowledge of the time, deriving
directly or indirectly from the medical school of Salerno. A considerable amount
of surgical instruments could be found too.38
The medical treatments must have been performed by highly trained
professionals, either by the Augustinians themselves, or at least with their
approval. Operations and treatments of such a complicated nature could
not have been done by popular healers or village surgeons.39 Archaeological
35
Passio et miracula, 115: in hospitali eiusdem ecclesie, quod infirmis deputatum est.
36
On Aebelholt and the miracle collection see Krötzl, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag,
66–70.
37
See Vilhelm Møller-Christensen, Bogen om Aebelholt Kloster (1958).
38
Ibid., 114–16.
39
Ibid., 257–9, 273.
findings from the Danish Cistercian monastery of Øm as well as from other

sites in Scandinavia point to a wide-spread knowledge of up-to-date medical
knowledge in the medieval North, but no written sources of medical treatments
are preserved from these other sites.40
When we compare these healing methods and medical treatments with the
information in documentary or hagiographic sources from Aebelholt there is a
clear discrepancy. The miracle collection of Abbot Wilhelm, dating to the time
period covered by the excavations, contains the usual criticism against medical
treatments; ‘no health can be found in doctors’ and the only way was to have faith
in God.41 In a case of difficulties after childbirth the husband came to Aebelholt.
The child had already appeared to be near to death and the husband asked for
‘Advice, a Writing or Medicine’, but the custodian could not give anything of
that kind. Instead he recommended to trust in God and the Saints.42
The only treatment recommended was salutary water (aqua medicinali),
taken from a small stream of water flowing over a tooth of Saint Wilhelm.43
The Custodians of the Church were, according to the descriptions, responsible
for the administration of the water.44 A woman, who had come with her little
daughter to Aebelholt, asked immediately after her arrival for the ‘Brother who
was responsible for the care of the sick’, as it is explicitly stated. She apparently
knew already beforehand what she wanted and asked him to apply some drops
of the holy liquid to the eyes of her daughter.45 In the whole source material
there is no mention of any kind of medical treatment.
In the hagiographic sources from Aebelholt we do find two cases which are
rather unique: the rejection of sick people coming to the shrine because there
40
K. Isager, Skeletfundene ved Øm Kloster (1936), 26, 42, 116. See also Ian McDougal,
‘The Third Instrument of Medicine. Some Account of Surgery in Medieval Iceland’, in
Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture, eds Sheila D. Campbell, Bert S. Hall and
David Klausner (1992), 57–83; Anna Götlind, ‘Technology and Religion in Medieval
Sweden’. PhD diss. University of Gothenburg, 1993, 57–8.
41
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum, 362: Multa medicis, filiis hominum, in quibus non est
salus, pro sui corporis mundatione voluit dare, sed non fuit, qui adiuvaret eum.
42
Ibid., 347–8: venit ad claustrum, sacristam invenit, inquirit ab eo, si aliquid consilii,
scripto vel medicina, novit contra tam miserum casum. Cui sic interroganti respondit: ‘Non est
opus medicina vel scripto in tali articulo, sed dei et sanctorum suffragio.
43
Ibid., 362–3: Advertens tandem, quia vana salus hominis, et quoniam adherere deo
bonum est et ponere in domino deo spem suam … mansit nobiscum vigiliis et orationibus insistens
et se sepius aqua medicinali lavans ac refrigerans.
44
Ibid., 352: Rogatur custos sepulcri, ut exhibeat illi paralitico salutarem liquorem, scilicet
aquam, in qua dens sancti Willelmi intinctus erat. Qui, satisfaciens precibus rogantium, dedit
aquam medicinalem.
45
Ibid., 355–6: Accedens illa cum filia ad fratrem, qui curam agebat infirmorum, rogat,
ut stillam sacri liquoris oculo misere nate infundat.
was no help available. In one case a severely ill woman had spent the night in
the church at the shrine. In a vision Saint Wilhelm appeared to her, declaring
‘Woman, go back to your home, because here you can not be cured’. He stated
that her health was in the hands of God, and added that she was to die after a
while. According to the account the woman accepted this and henceforward felt
no more pains. ‘Because the words of God can not be changed’ as she referred
to her fellow-pilgrims, she returned at home and died peacefully.46 In another

case Wilhelm appeared in a vision and declared to a man: ‘Why are you lying
here? You will not gain your health at this location. After your return home you
will be cured again, but this will not last’. In this case the man did not believe
first what he had heard but resigned himself to his fate, after discussions with
the custodians. He returned home and died a short while afterwards, struck by
a falling tree.47
In my view these unique ‘anti-miracles’ can be seen as attempts to deter those
with too high expectations of immediate healing. On the other hand they might
also be seen as hinting at the variety of healing methods used in Aebelholt, where
faith in God, the Saints and their miracle power existed alongside advanced
healing methods and medical treatments. Shrines and places like Aebelholt,
where a wide variety of healing methods was available, seemed to fulfil the
function of medieval ‘health centres’. We can see this in the words of a paralysed
woman, who having travelled a long way from Norway to Denmark to reach the
shrine, is quoted as saying she had reached the ‘Door of Health, which means
the shrine of the Saint’.48
From the evidence given in this study we might draw the conclusion that the
picture usually given in hagiographic sources has to be questioned. Anti-medical
46
Ibid., 356: quedam mulier multis cruciata doloribus […] Nocturnas in ecclesia agens
vigilias, cum levi correpta sopore […] vidit confessorem domini assistentem sibi et dicentem:
‘Mulier, revertere in domum tuam, quia in presenti non poteris curari. Est tamen salus tua in
manu domini: postquam aliquantulum temporis feceris in tuis cruciatibus, tanquam lapis vivus
in celesti edificio collocaberis’. In his verbis expergefacta mulier letior ex promissione efficitur,
quam si corporales amisisset dolores; et, que sibi dicta fuerant, circumstantibus referens et
animadvertens dei decretum esse inmutabile, reversa in domum suam cum summa devotione
vite sue prestolabatur terminum.
47
Ibid., 357: Dormienti apparuit confessor dei, inquiens: ‘Quid hic iaces? Sanitatem in
hoc loco non habebis. Te autem in domum tuam redeunte, sanitatem recuperabis; sed illa non
erit tibi diuturna’. His auditis conturbatum est cor hominis […] Instructus ergo, quod divina
providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur, ad proprios lares revertitur. Postmodum non multo
elapso tempore […] silvam ingreditur […] robur, in quo laborat, super eum corruit, et confractus
membra mortuus est.
48
Ibid., 364: Applicuit mulier ad portum salutis, scilicet ad sepulchrum viri dei. For a
later example, see Jonas Van Mulder’s discussion on the shrine of Saint Dymphna in Geel on
p. 247 of this volume.
stereotypes were only one side of the picture. A shrine like Aebelholt, where a
wide variety of healing methods was used, from faith healing to advanced medical
treatments, cannot have been totally exceptional or unique; with a thorough
scrutiny of both written, archaeological and other evidence similar cases will
presumably be found elsewhere too. When taking this into consideration we
might even explain these aforementioned hagiographic stories, where the saint
is given an active role as healer or even as medical doctor: they can be seen as
hinting at the variety of healing methods used.
Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
Augsburg
Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 2o Cod. 338.
Avranches
Bibliothèque municipale d’Avranches [Hôtel de Ville], MS 132.
Brussels
Bibliothèque Royal de Belgique/Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, MS 8179–

80.
Cambridge
Trinity College Library, MS R. 14.30.
Freiburg
University Library in Freiburg, Cod. 185 (F), ‘Magdalena Book’.
Nuremberg
Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Hs. 7177.

Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Imhoff-Archiv, Fasc. 44, No. 1.
Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, B 14/III, No. 1.
Sankt Florian
Stift Sankt Florian, Cod. XI 152.
Stockholm
National Library of Sweden, A 49.

Riksarkhivet, Cod. Skokloster 15.
Troyes, Médiathèque de l’Agglomération Troyenne
MS 228, Jacques de Vitry [Sermones vulgares], Biblia latina.

Vatican City
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 677.

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 4015.
Würzburg
Würzburg Universitätbibliothek, M. ch. f. 51.
Printed Primary Sources
Abraham van Bemmel. Beschrijving van de stad Amersfoort, Volume 1

(Utrecht, 1760).
‘Acta inquisitoris Umbriae Fr. Angeli de Assisio contra stigmata S. Francisci
negantem contra fraticellos aliosque, a. 1361’, edited by Livarius Oliger,
Archivum franciscanum historicum, 24 (1931), 63–90.
Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte, edited by Isaac Collijn (Uppsala:
Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskrift, 1924–30).
Acta sanctorum quotquot toto urbe coluntur, ed. by J. Bollandus and others
(Antwerp and Brussels: Societé des Bollandistes, 1643–).
Actes anciens et documents concernant le Bienheureux Urbain V pape, edited by
Joseph Hyacinthe Albanès and Ulysses Chevalier (Paris: A. Picard, 1897).
Analecta Franciscana sive chronica aliaque varia documenta, Tomus VII. Processus
Canonizationis et Legendae variae Sancti Ludovici O.F.M. Episcopi Tolosani,
edited by Collegio S. Bonaventura (Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1951).
Bernold von Konstanz. ‘Chronicon’, edited by G.H. Pertz, in Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, SS. (Hannover 1826–), Vol. 5.
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. ‘The Major Legend of Saint Francis’, in Francis of
Assisi: Early Documents. Vol. II. The Founder, edited by Regis J. Armstrong,
J.A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short (New York: New City Press,
1999), 525–683.
Butler, H.E. The Apologia and Floida of Apuleius of Madaura (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1909).
Caspar von Stieler. Der Deutschen Sprache Stammbaum und Fortwachs oder
Deutscher Sprachschatz, worinnen alle … teutsche … Stammwörter nebst ihrer
Bibliography 267
Abkunft, abgeleiteten … Redarten mit guter lateinischen Tolmetschung … befind-

lich … in vielen Jahren gesamlet von dem Spaten (Johann Hofmanns, 1691).
Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, edited by Richard
Howlett, Rolls Series, No. 82, 1/4 vols (London: Longman & Co. 1884–89).
Clementine Vulgate Project. [http://vulsearch.sourceforge.net/gettext.html].
Codice diplomatico della Verna e delle SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco d’Assisi nel
VII° centenario del gran prodigio, edited by Saturnino Mencherini (Florence:

Verna, 1924).
Concilia Pragensia = Prager Synodal-Beschlüsse, edited by C. Höfler (Prag: 1862).
‘Die beiden ersten Bücher der Libri VIII miraculorum’, in Die Wundergeschichten
des Caesarius von Heisterbach, edited by Alfons Hilka (Bonn: Hanstein,
1937), III.
Die Chronik von Karl dem Grossen und Roland: Der lateinische Pseudo-Turpin
in den Handschriften aus Aachen und Andernach, edited by H.-W. Klein
(Munich: 1986).
Ekkehard von Aura. ‘Hierosolymita’, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades:
Historiens Occidentaux (1844–95), Vol. 5.
Enquête pour le procès de canonisation de Dauphine de Puimichel Comtesse
d’Ariano, Apt et Avignon, 14 mai–30 octobre 1363, edited by Jacques Cambell
(Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1978).
Epistolae saeculi XIII e regestis pontificum Romanorum, Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, edited by C. Rodenberg, Vol. 1 (Berlin: 1883–94).
Eudes de Châteauroux. Sermo I-V, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model
Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross, edited by C.T. Maier (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Eudes de Châteauroux. ‘Sermo in anniversario Roberti comitis Attrabatensis
et aliorum nobilium qui interfecti fuerant a Sarracenis apud Mansuram
in Egipto’, in The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270,
edited by P. Cole (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1991).
Eudes de Châteauroux. ‘De sancto Georgio sermo’, in A. Charansonnet,
‘L’université, l’Eglise et l’Etat dans les sermons du cardinal Eudes de
Châteauroux (1190?–1273)’. PhD diss. Universite de Lyon 2 – Louis
Lumiere, 2001.
Federico Visconti. ‘Sermo XXVI–XXVII, LXXX’, in Les sermons et la visite
pastorale de Federico Visconti archévêque de Pise (1253–1277), edited by
Nicole Bériou et al. (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001).
Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis 1–4. Fasciculus IV, Processus canonizationis
S. Thomae, Neapoli, edited by M.-H. Laurent (Saint-Maximin: Revue
Thomiste, 1911).
Francesco Petrarca. Lettere senili (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1868).
Francis of Assisi. ‘The Earlier Rule’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. Vol.
I. The Saint, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and
William J. Short, New York: New City Press, 1999, 63–86.
Francis of Assisi. ‘Later Admonition and Exhortation’, in Francis of Assisi: Early
Documents. Vol. I. The Saint, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne
Hellmann and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 45–51.
Francis of Assisi. ‘Admonitions’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. Vol. I. The

Saint, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and William
J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 128–37.
Francis of Assisi. ‘The Canticle of the Creatures’, in Francis of Assisi: Early
Documents. Vol. I. The Saint, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne
Hellmann and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 113–14.
Fulcher de Chartres. Historia Hierosolymitana, edited by Heinrich Hagenmeyer
(Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1913).
Guibert de Nogent. ‘Gesta Dei per Francos’, in Recueil des Historiens des
Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, Vol. 4. (1844–95).
Guibert de Tournai. Sermo I-III, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model
Guillaume de Saint-Pathus. Les Miracles de Saint Louis, edited by Percival B. Fay
(Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1931).
Götz von Berlichingen. Mein Fehd und Handlungen, edited by Helgard
Ulmschneider (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1981).
Hildegardis Causae et curae, edited by Paulus Kaiser (Lipsiae: In aedibus
B.G. Teubneri, 1903).
Hildegard von Bingen. Physica: Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturarum
creaturarum, edited by Reiner Hildebrandt and Thomas Gloning (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2010).
Hildegard Von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic
Work on Health and Healing, trans. by Priscilla Throop (Rochester: Healing
Arts Press, 1998).
Hippocrates. Places in Man, ed. and trans. with Introduction and Commentary
by Elizabeth M. Craik (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
Horace, The Epistles, trans. C. Macleod (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1986).
Hrabanus Maurus. De Universo libri viginti duo, in Patrologiae cursus completus:
series latina, Vol. CXI, edited by J.P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1852).
Humbert de Romans. ‘De predicatione sancte crucis’, edited by Kurt Villads
Jensen [http://www.jggj.dk/saracenos.htm, accessed on July 2012–
November 2013].
Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino, edited by Nicola
Occhioni (Rome: École française de Rome, 1984).
Bibliography 269
Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco, edited by Enrico Menestò

(Florence and Perugia: La Nuova Italia, 1984).
Jacob Gretser. ‘Refvtatio Errorvm, quibus Waldenses distinentur, incerto
Auctore’, in Lucae tvdensis episcopi, Scriptores aliqvot svccedanei contra sectam
waldensivm, 302G–307F. (Lvgdvni: Anissonios, 1677).
Jacobus de Voragine. ‘Sermo III de stigmatibus S. Francisci’, in Testimonia
minora saeculi XIII de S. Francisco Assisiensi, edited by Leonhard Lemmens

(Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1926), 113–14.
Jacobus de Voragine. ‘Sermo I-II’, in Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model
Jacobus de Voragine. ‘Sermo ad peregrinos. Thema sumpta ex Zacharias capitulo
ultimo’ and ‘Ad peregrinos, thema sumpta ex epistola ad Galathas iii’, in
‘James of Vitry’s Sermons to Pilgrims’, edited by J. Bird, Essays in Medieval
Studies, 25 (2008), 81–113.
Jean-Baptiste De Ville. Histoire des plantes de l’Europe et des plus usitées qui
viennent d’Asie, d’Afrique & d’Amerique (Lyon: Chez Jean-Baptiste De Ville,
1689).
Joannes de Segovia. Historia gestorum generalis synodi Basiliensis. Volumen I,
Liber I–XII, edited by Ernestus Birk (Vindobonae: Typis C.R. Officinae
typographicae aulae et status, 1873).
Johann Carl von Fichard. ‘Gedichte Johanns von Soest eines Hofsängers
und Arzts. Von 1501 und 1504’, Frankfurtisches Archiv für ältere deutsche
Litteratur und Geschichte, 1 (1811), 75–139.
Johannes von Soest. Die Kinder von Limburg, ediert nach Cod. Pal. germ. 87, edited
by Manfred Klett, Wiener Arbeiten zur Germanischen Altertumskunde und
Philologie 4 (Vienna: Verlag Karl M. Halosar, 1975), III–X.
L’antidotaire Nicolas. Deux traductions françaises de l’Antidotarium Nicolai. L’une
du XIVè siècle suivie de quelques recettes de la même époque et d’un glossaire.
L’autre du XVe siècle incomplète. Publiées d’après les manuscrits français 25327
et 14827 de la Bibliothèque nationale, edited by Paul Dorveaux (Paris:
H. Welter, 1896).
Lefebvre, Ferdinand, Louise Lateau, sa vie, ses stigmates, ses extases (Louvain:
Peeters, 1870).
Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Vols I–II,
edited by James Craigie Robertson (London: Longman & Co., 1875).
Matthaeus Parisiensis. Chronica majora, Vol. III, edited by H.R. Luard (London:
Longman & Co., 1872).
Matthaeus Platearius. Le livre des simple médecines: traduction française du Liber
de simplici medicina dictus Circa instans de Platearius: tirée d’un mansucrit du
XIIIe siècle (Ms. 3113 de la Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève de Paris), publié pour
la première fois par Paul Dorveaux (Paris: Société française d’histoire de la

medicine, 1913).
Michael Pexenfelder. Apparatus Eruditionis tam rerum quam verborum per
omnes artes et scientias. Ed. 4. auct. (Sulzbach: Martin Endter, 1704).
Mirakelboeck Onser Liever Vrouwen ’t Amersfoert, edited by Lukkenaer, P.
(Amersfoort: Uit. Het Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gilde, 1946).
Monumenta Romana episcopatus Vesprimiensis, Vol. I, edited by Vilmos Fráknói

(Budapest: 1896).
Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste,
edited by Henri-Francois Delaborde 1/2 vols (Paris: Renouard, 1885).
On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus
De Proprietatibus Rerum. A Critical Edition, 3 vols, edited by M.C. Seymour
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1975–89).
Passio et miracula B. Olavi, edited by F. Metcalfe (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1881).
Petrus de Dacia. Vita Christinae Stumbelensis, edited by Johannes Paulson
(Göteborg, 1896, repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1985).
Petrus de Pilichdorf. ‘Fragmentvm ex Tractatv Petri de Pilichdorff contra
pauperes de Lugduno. Ex M.S.C. Monasterij Tegernseensi’, in Lucae tvdensis
episcopi, Scriptores aliqvot svccedanei contra sectam waldensivm, edited by Jacob
Gretser, 299E–302F. Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, et Antiquorum
Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. Tom. XXV (Lvgdvni: Anissonios, 1677).
‘Petrus Thomae on the Stigmata of St. Francis’, edited by G.E. Mohan, Franciscan
Studies 8 (1948): 285–94.
Petrus Zwicker. ‘[Pseudo]-Petri de Pilichdorf contra Haeresin Waldensium
Tractatus [Cum dormirent homines]’, in Lucae tvdensis episcopi, Scriptores
aliqvot svccedanei contra sectam waldensivm, edited by Jacob Gretser,
277F–299G. Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, et Antiquorum
Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum. Tom. XXV (Lvgdvni: Anissonios, 1677).
Pietro Pomponazzi. De incantationibus, edited by Vittoria Perrone Compagni
with the assistance of Laura Regnicoli (Florence: Olschki, 2011).
Plato. Timaeus (Loeb Classical Library No. 234, v. 9), edited by G.P. Goold LCL
234, trans. by R.G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921).
Pliny. Natural History in ten volumes, edited and translated by Horace.
Rackham (London: Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1952).
Processus seu negocium canonizacionis B. Katerine de Vadstenis, edited by Isak
Collijn (Uppsala: 1942–46).
Quellen zur böhmischen Inquisition im 14. Jahrhundert, edited by Alexander
Patschovsky, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte
des Mittelalters 11 (Weimar, 1979).
Bibliography 271
Quellen zur Geschichte der Waldenser, edited by Alexander Patschovsky and

Kurt-Victor Selge (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1973).
Quellenstudien zur Geschichte der hl. Elisabeth, Landgräfin von Thüringen,
edited by Albert Huyskens (Marburg: Elwert, 1908).
Raymond d’Aguilers, ‘Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem’, in Recueil
des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Occidentaux (1844–95), Vol. 3.
Raymundus de Capua, Vita Sanctae Catharinae Senensis. Legenda maior, in Acta

Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur, Aprilis III, edited by J. Bollandus and
others (Venice: Societé des Bollandistes, 1738), cols 584–959.
Roger of Salisbury. Ascendente Ihesu in naviculum, in The Preaching of the
Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270, edited by P. Cole (Medieval
Academy of America, Cambridge, MA, 1991).
Santa Chiara di Montefalco monaca agostiniana (1268–1308) nel contesto socio-
religioso femminile nei secoli XIII–XIV, edited by Enrico Menestò (Spoleto:
CISAM, 2009).
Scriptores Rerum Svecicarum medii aevi II:1, edited by Ericus Michael Fant
(Uppsala: 1850).
Snappe’s Formulary and Other Records, edited by H.E. Salter (Oxford: Oxford
Historical Society, 1924).
‘The Assisi Compilation’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. II. The
Founder, edited by J. Regis, J.A. Armstrong, Wayne Hellmann and William
J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 113–231.
The Deeds of Pope Innocent III by an Anonymous Author, edited and translated
by James M. Powell (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2004).
The Life of Marie d’Oignies by Jacques de Vitry, translated by Margot H. King
(Saskatoon: Peregrina, 1986).
Thomas Antonii de Senis ‘Caffarini’. Libellus de supplemento, Legende prolixe
virginis beate Catherine de Senis, edited by Iuliana Cavallini and Imelda
Foralosso (Roma: Edizioni Cateriniane, 1974).
Thomas of Celano. ‘The Life of Saint Francis’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Document,
Vol. I. The Saint, edited by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and
William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), 180–310.
Thomas Ebendorfer. Catalogus Praesulum Laureacensium et Pataviensium,
edited by Harald Zimmermann, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
Scriptores Rerum Germanicum Nova Series 22 (Hannover: Hahnsche
Buchhandlung, 2008).
Thomas Ebendorfer. Chronica Austriae, edited by Alphons Lhotsky, in
Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Rerum Germanicum Nova
Series 13 (Berlin and Zürich: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1967).
Thomas Ebendorfer. Tractatus de Schismatibus, edited by Harald Zimmermann,

in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Rerum Germanicum Nova
Series 20 (München: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004).
Titus Maccius Plautus, Commedie (Milan: Mondadori, 2007).
‘Der Tractat des David von Augsburg über die Waldesier’, edited by Wilhelm
Preger, in Abhandlungen der historischen Classe der königlich bayrischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften 14 (1879), 203–35.

Trotula: un compendio medievale di medicina delle donne, edited by Monica
H. Green (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2009).
‘Tundale’s Vision’, in Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, edited and
translated by Eileen Gardiner (New York: Italica Press, 1989), 149–96.
‘Vita Elizabeth sanctimonialis in Erkenrode’, in Catalogus codicum hagio-
graphicum bibliothecae Regie Bruxellensis, Vol. 1, edited by Hagiographi
Bollandiani (Bruxelles: Societé des Bollandistes, 1886), 362–78.
Vitae Sanctorum Danorum. Novam editinomen criticam, edited by M.C. Gertz
(Copenhagen: 1908).
Vita venerabilis Lukardis, edited by J. de Baker, Analecta Bollandiana, 18
(1899): 305–67.
Wilhelm Preger. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Waldesier im Mittelalter (München:
Verlag der k. Akadamie der Wissenschaften, 1877).
Literature
Adamesteanu, Dinu and Lejeune, Michel. ‘Il Santuario Lucano di Macchia di

Rossano di Vaglio’, Atti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Classe di scienze
Morali, Storiche e Filologiche 16 (1971): 39–83.
Adler, Eve. Vergil’s Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003).
Agulhon, Maurice. La sociabilité méridionale: confréries et associations dans la
vie collective en Provence orientale à la fin du 18e siècle (Aix-en-Provence: La
Pensée Universitaire, 1966).
Ahl, Frederick. ‘The Rider and the Horse: Politics and Power in Roman Poetry
from Horace to Statius’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.32.1
(1984): 40–124.
Albrecht, Gary L., Katherine D. Seelman and Michael Bury, eds, Handbook of
Disability Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001).
Alfonsi, L. “Caratteristiche della letteratura giulio-claudia”, Aufstieg und
Niedergang der römischen Welt II.32.1 (1984): 3–39.
Allison, Penelope. Pompeian Households: An Analysis of Material Culture (Los
Angeles: University of California, 2004).
Bibliography 273
Allison, Penelope. The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. Vol. III: The Finds, A
Contextual Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Altmann, Alexander and S.M. Stern. Isaac Israeli: a Neoplatonic Philosopher of
the Early Tenth Century: His Works Transl. With Comments and an Outline
of His Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).
Amedick, Rita. Vita privata: Die Sarkophage mit Darstellungen aus dem
Menschenleben (Berlin: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1991).

Ames, Christine Caldwell. Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and
Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2009).
Amigues, Suzanne. ‘La segnature des plantes, source de croyance ou de savoir
dans l’Antiquité gréco-romain?’, in Études de botanique antique, edited by
Suzanne Amigues (Paris: Mémoires de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-
lettres, 2002), 149–60.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).
Andrić, Stanko. Miracles of St. John Capistran (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2000).
Antunes, Gabriela, and Björn Reich. ‘(De)formierte Körper, die Wahrnehmung
und das Andere im Mittelalter: Eine Einleitung’, in (De)formierte Körper. Die
Wahrnehmung und das Andere im Mittelalter, edited by Gabriela Antunes
and Björn Reich (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2010), 9–30.
Aragosti, Andrea. Frammenti Plautini dalle commedie extra Varroniane
(Bologna: Pàtron, 2009).
Archambeau, Nicole. ‘Tempted to kill: miraculous Consolation for a mother
after the death of her infant daughter’, in Emotions and Health, 1200–1700,
edited by Elena Carrera (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 47–66.
Arnold, John H. Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject
in Medieval Languedoc (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2001).
Ash, Rhiannon. ‘Severed heads. Individual Portraits and Irrational Forces in
Plutarch’s Galba and Otho’, Plutarch and His Intellectual World, edited by
J. Mosman (London: Duckworth, 1997), 189–214.
Atkins, Margaret and Robin Osborne, eds, Poverty in the Roman World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Aupert, Pierre. ‘Les thermes comme lieux de culte’, in Les Thermes Romains:
Actes de la table ronde organise par l’École française de Rome (Rome: École
Française de Rome, 1991), 185–92.
Bacci, Massimo Livi. A Concise History of World Population, translated by Carl
Ibsen (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1994).
Baldwin, John W. The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French

Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1986).
Baldwin, John W. ‘The Many Loves of Philip Augustus’, in The Medieval
Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy, edited by Sherry Roush and
Cristelle L. Baskins (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, 2005), 67–80.

Bartlett, Robert. Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and
Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Beattie, Cordelia. Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in
Late Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Benedictow, Ole Jørgen. The Black Death, 1346–1353. The Complete History
(Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004).
Benfatti, Solanus. The Five Wounds of Saint Francis (Charlotte, NC: TAN
Books, 2011).
Berg, Ria. ‘Il mundus muliebris nelle fonti latini e nei contesti pompeiani’. PhD
diss. University of Helsinki, 2010.
Berg, Ria. ‘Lo specchio di Venere. Mundus muliebris nella pittura pompeiana’, in
Atti del X congresso internazionale, Association Internationale pour la Peinture
Murale Antique, 2007, edited by Irene Bragantini (Naples: Università degli
Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, 2010), 289–300.
Bergdolt, Klaus. Der schwarze Tod in Europa: die große Pest und das Ende des
Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1994).
Bériou, Nicole. ‘La predication de croisade de Philippe le Chancelier et d’Eudes
de Châteauroux en 1226’, in Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 32, La predication en Pays
d’Oc (XIIe–début XVe siècle) (Toulouse: Privat, 1997), 85–109.
Bériou, Nicole and François-Olivier Touati. Voluntate Dei leprosus: les lépreux
entre conversion et exclusion aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Spoleto: Centro italiano
di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1991).
Bettini, Maurizio. Nascere. Storie di donne, donnole, madri ed eroi (Torino:
Einaudi, 1998).
Bettini, Maurizio. ‘Venus venusta. Il corpo femminile fra piacere, filtri amorosi
e voglia di perdonare’, in Il corpo a pezzi, edited by Gianna Petrone and
Salvatore D’Onofrio (Palermo: Flaccovio, 2004), 79–94.
Bilderback, Loy. ‘Eugene IV and the First Dissolution of the Council of Basle’,
Church History 36/3 (1967): 243–53.
Biller, Peter. ‘Aspects of the Waldenses in the Fourteenth Century, Including an
Edition of Their Correspondence’. PhD diss. University of Oxford, 1974.
Biller, Peter. ‘The Anti-Waldensian Treatise Cum Dormirent Homines of 1395
and its Author’, in The Waldenses, 1170–1530: Between a Religious Order
and a Church (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 237–69.
Bibliography 275
Biller, Peter. ‘The Waldenses in German-Speaking Areas in the Later Fourteenth

Century: The View of an Inquisitor’, in The Waldenses, 1170–1530: Between
a Religious Order and a Church (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 271–91.
Biller, Peter. ‘Bernard Gui, Peter Zwicker, and the Geography of Valdismo or
Valdismi’, Bollettino Della Società Di Studi Valdesi – Bulletin de La Société
d’Histoire Vaudoise 124/200 (2007): 31–43.
Binsfeld, Wolfgang. ‘Grylloi. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Karikatur’.
PhD diss. University of Cologne, 1956.
Birchler, Patrizia Emery. L’iconographie de la vieillesse en Grèce archaïque. Une
contribution à l’étude du grand âge dans l’Antiquité (Sarrebruck: Editions
universitaires européennes, 2010).
Bliquez, Lawrence J. Roman Surgical Instruments and Other Minor Objects in
the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (Mainz: von Zabern, 1994).
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, ed. ‘Miracles and Social Status in the Middle
Ages’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 19 (2010): 231–82.
Boldi, V. ‘Il culto delle acque e le stipe votive salutari nel territorio Aretino’,
Atti e Memorie della Accademia Petrarca di Lettere, Arti e Scienze 25
(1938): 306–13.
Bolla, Margherita. ‘Les bassins. I bacili con attacchi a foglie di vite’, in La vaisselle
tardo-républicaine en bronze. Actes de la table-ronde CNRS organisèe à Lattes,
26–28 avril 1990, edited by Michel Feugére and Claude Rolley (Dijon:
Université de Dijon, 1991), 113–20.
Bonath, Gesa. ‘Johann von Soest’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters.
Verfasserlexikon, edited by Kurt Ruh et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978–2008,
2nd edition), Vol. IV (1983), cols 744–55.
Bono, James. ‘Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life’, Traditio 40
(1984): 91–130.
Borsari, L. ‘Terracina: Del Tempio di Giove Anxur’, Notizie degli Scavi di
Antichità (1984): 96–111.
Bosman, Philippus, ed. Mania. Madness in the Greco-Roman World (Pretoria:
Classical Association of South Africa 2009).
Bouchard, Constanze Brittain. Strong of Body, Brave & Noble. Chivalry &
Society in Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
Boudon-Millot, Véronique and Françoise Micheau, eds. Histoire, transmission
et acculturation de la Thériaque, Actes du colloque de Paris (18 mars 2010)
(Paris: Beauchesne, forthcoming).
Bouflet, Joachim. Les stigmatisés (Paris: Cerf, 1996).
Bouflet, Joachim. Thérèse Neumann ou le paradoxe de la sainteté (Monaco:
Éditions du Rocher, 1999).
Bouflet, Joachim. Anne-Catherine Emmerick. Celle qui partagea la Passion de
Jésus (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2004).
Boureau, Alain. ‘Miracle, volonté et imagination: La mutation scolastique

(1270–1320)’, in Miracles, prodiges et merveilles au Moyen Age, XXVe Congrès
de la S.H.M.E.S. Orléans, juin 1994 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne,
1995), 159–73.
Bourneville, Dr. Science & Miracle. Louise Lateau, ou la stigmatisée belge (Paris:
A. Delahaye, 1875).
Brandstetter, Georg. ‘“Reliquienberg” und Stigmata. Clemens Brentano und

Anna Katharina Emmerick – der Blut-Kreislauf der Schrift’, in Stigmata.
Poetiken der Körperinschrift Bettine Menke and Barbara Vinken (München:
Fink, 2004), 243–68.
Braund, Susanna Morton and Paula James. ‘Quasi homo: Distortion and
Contortion in Seneca’s Apocolycyntosis’, Arethusa 31 (1998): 285–311.
Breda, Nadia. ‘Figure sociali dei saperi naturali. Un percorso fra testi e
rappresentazioni dall’etnoscienza all’antropologia dei saperi’, La Ricerca
Folklorica 36 (1997): 111–31.
Breitwieser, Rupert, ed. Behinderungen und Beeinträchtigungen/Disability and
Impairment in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxbow, 2012).
Brentano, Clemens. Anna Katharina Emmerick – Biographie, edited by
J. Matthies, Clemens Brentano sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Band 28,1
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1981).
Brooke, Rosalind. The Image of St. Francis. Responses to Sainthood in the
Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Brulé, Pierre. ‘Bâtons et bâton du mâle, adulte, citoyen’, in L’expression des corps.
Gestes, attitudes, regards dans l’iconographie antique, edited by Lydie Bodiou,
Dominique Frère and Véronique Mehl (Rennes: PUR, 2006), 75–84.
Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Brunel, Clovis. ‘Recettes médicales du XIIIe siècle en langue de Provence’,
Romania 83 (1962): 145–74.
Brunner, Horst. ‘Johann von Soest, Willibald Pirckheimer – zwei Fallstudien’, in
Autorentypen, edited by Walter Haug and Burghart Wachinger (Tübingen:
Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1991), 89–103.
Bueno, Irene. ‘False Prophets and Ravening Wolves: Biblical Exegesis as a Tool
against Heretics in Jacques Fournier’s Postilla on Matthew’, Speculum 89/1
(2014): 35–65.
Burguiere, P., Danielle Gourevitch and Y. Malinas, eds. Soranos d’Ephese,
Maladies des femmes. Tome I–IV (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988–2000).
Burnett, Arthur L. and Trinity J. Bivalacqua. ‘Priapism: New Concepts in
Medical and Surgical Management’, Urologic Clinics of North America 38
(2011): 185–94.
Bush, Michael L. Rich Noble, Poor Noble (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1988).
Bibliography 277
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New
York: Routledge, 1990).
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of
Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles: The University of
California Press, 1991).
Bynum, Caroline Walker. ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the
Later Middle Ages’, in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, edited
by Michael Feher, Ramona Nadaff and N. Tazi (New York: Zone Books,
1991), 161–220.
Caciola, Nancy, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle
Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).
Cadden, Joan. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science,
and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Cadden, Joan. ‘Western Medicine and Natural Philosophy’, in Handbook of
Medieval Sexuality, edited by Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage
(New York and London: Garland, 1996), 51–80.
Cairns, Francis. Virgil’s Augustan Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989).
Cameron, Euan. Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000).
Camporesi, Piero. Il libro dei vagabondi (Torino: Einaudi, 1980).
Capitani, Isabella. ‘Sulle molteplici valenze di pharmacon a partire dai dialoghi
platonici e dai testi ippocratici’, in Testi medici latini antichi. Le parole della
medicina: lessico e storia, edited by Sergio Sconocchia and Fabio Cavalli
(Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 2004), 665–82.
Carletti, Giuseppe, Ludovico Mirri, Marco Carloni, Vincenzo Brenna and
Franciszek Smuglewicz. Vestigia delle Terme di Tito e loro interne pitture/
Le antiche camere delle Terme di Tito e le loro pitture restituite al pubblico
(Roma: 1776).
Carroll, Ruth. ‘Middle English Recipes: Vernacularisation of a Text-Type’, in
Medical And Scientific Writing In Late Medieval English, edited by Irma
Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 186–9.
Caspers, Charles. ‘Weg met de duivel? De rooms-katholieke Kerk en haar
“groot-exorcisme”, van de zestiende eeuw tot heden’, in Duivelsbeelden.
Een cultuurhistorische speurtocht door de Lage Landen, edited by Gerard
Rooijakkers (Baarn: Ambo, 1994), 286–309.
Castelli, Francesco. ‘La Congregazione del Sant’Uffizio e il caso di Therese
Neumann durante il pontificato di Pio XI’, Archivio italiano per la storia della
pietà 23 (2010): 101–34.
Castelli, Francesco. Padre Pio e il Sant’Uffizio (1918–1939). Fatti, protagonisti,
documenti inediti (Roma: Studium, 2011).
Castelli, Francesco. ‘Stimmate ‘sotto la lente’ del Sant’Uffizio:i casi di padre Pio
da Pietrelcina e di Therese Neumann’, in Discorsi sulle stimmate dal Medioevo
all’età contemporanea – Discours sur les stigmates du Moyen Âge à l’époque
contemporaine, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, Archivio italiano per la storia della
pietà, 26 (2013), 333–63.
Cavallo, Sandra and Lyndan Warner, eds. Widowhood in Medieval and Early
Modern Europe (Harlow: Longman, 1999).

Cerchiai, Luca. ‘Acque, grotte e dei: I santuari indigeni nell’Italia meridionale’,
Ocnus 7 (1999): 205–22.
Chaplin, Jane D. Livy’s Exemplary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000).
Chauvin-Lechaptois, Monique. Les Comptes de la chatellenie de Lamballe
(Manors: Université de Haute-Bretagne, 1977).
Chave-Mahir, Florence. ‘Venenum sub melle latet. L’image du poison dans le
discours anti-hérétique au Moyen Âge’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et
humanistes 17 (2009): 161–72.
Chellini, Riccaro. Acque Sorgive Salutari e Sacre in Etruria (Italiae Regio VII):
Ricerche Archeologiche e di Topografia Antica (Oxford: Hadrian Books, 2002).
Chirassi Colombo, Ileana. ‘Acculturation et Cultes Thérapeutiques’, in Le
Syncrétismes dans les Religions de’L’Antiquité, edited by F. Dunand and
P. Lévêque (Leiden: Brill, 1975).
Claridge, Cecil. Culture, Health and Illness: An Introduction for Health
Professionals (Bristol: Wright-PSG, 1984).
Claridge, Gordon. Drugs and Human Behaviour (London: Allen Lane, 1970).
Clark, Patricia A. and M. Lynn Rose. ‘Psychiatric Disability and the Galenic
Medical Matrix’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity: Disparate Bodies a
capite ad calcem, edited by Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose
(Leiden: Brill, 2013), 45–72.
Clarke, John R. Looking at Lovemaking. Constructions of Sexuality in Roman
Art 100 B.C.–A.D. 250 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998).
Classen, Albrecht, ed. Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times:
New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-
Anthropological Theme (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2008).
Classen, C.J. ‘Clio exclusa’, in Clio and the Poets. Augustan Poetry and the
Traditions of Ancient Historiography, edited by D.S. Levene and D.P. Nelis
(Leiden: Brill. 2002), 1–24.
Cloerkes, Günther. Soziologie der Behinderten: eine Einführung (Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag Winter, 2001).
Coakley, John. ‘Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican
Hagiography’, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, edited by Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell
University Press, 1991), 222–45.
Bibliography 279
Coarelli, Filippo. I Santuari del Lazio in Età Repubblicana (Rome: Carocci,

1987).
Coarelli, Filippo. ‘Il Culto di Mefitis in Campania e à Roma’, I Culti della
Campania antica: Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi in Ricordo
di Nazarena Valenza Mele (Napoli 15–17 maggio 1995) (Rome: G.
Bretschneider, 1998), 185–90.
Cohen, Esther. The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Cole, Penny. The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270
(Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1991).
Coles, Andrew. ‘Animal and Childhood Cognition in Aristotle’s Biology and the
Scala Naturae’, in Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse.
Akten des Symposions über Aristoteles’ Biologie vom 24. – 28. Juli 1995 in der
Werner-Reimers-Stiftung in Bad Homburg, edited by Wolfgang Kullmann
and Sabine Föllinger (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1997), 287–323.
Colini, A.M. ‘La Stipe delle Aque Salutari di Vicarello: Notizie sul Complesso
della Scoperta’, Rendiconti della Pontifiche Accademia Romana Archeologica
40 (1967–68): 35–56.
Collard, Franck and Evelyne Samama, eds. Handicaps et sociétés dans l’histoire:
l’estropié, l’aveugle et le paralytique de l’Antiquité au temps modernes (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2010).
Collins, Minta. Medieval Herbals. The Illustrative Traditions (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2000).
Comber, Abigail Elizabeth. ‘A Medieval King “Disabled” by an Early Modern
Construct: A Contextual Examination of Richard III’, in Disability in the
Middle Ages. Reconsiderations and Reverberations, edited by Joshua R. Eyler
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 183–96.
Conklin, George. ‘Ingeborg of Denmark, Queen of France, 1193–1223’, in
Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, edited by Anne J. Duggan
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 39–52.
Constable, Giles. Attitudes toward Self-inflicted Suffering in the Middle Ages
(Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1982).
Constable, Giles. ‘The Imitation of the Body of Christ’, in Three Studies in
Medieval Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
143–247.
Constable, Giles. Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought. The
Interpretation of Mary and Martha; The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ; The
Orders of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Constable, Giles. Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2008).
Coon, Lynda L. Dark Age Bodies. Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early
Medieval West (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2010).
Corbeill, Anthony. Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2004).
Corbier, Mireille. ‘Child exposure and abandonment’, in Childhood, Class and
Kin in the Roman World, edited by Suzanne Dixon (London: Routledge,
2001), 52–73.
Cosentino, R. and P. Sabbatini Tumolesi. ‘L’edificio Termale delle Aquae
Caeretanae’, Miscellanea Ceretana 17.1 (1989): 95–112.

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies. Disability in Contemporary Life Writing
(Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2009).
Craig, Leigh Ann. Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in
the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Crouch, David. The Birth of Nobility. Constructing Aristocracy in England and
France: 900–1300 (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005).
Cunliffe, Barry. The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, v.2: The Finds from the
Sacred Spring (Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 1988).
Dalarun, Jacques. ‘The Great Secret of Francis’, in Jacques Dalarun, Michael
Cusato and Carla Salvati, The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies New
Perspectives (St Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2002), 9–26.
Dalarun, Jacques. The Misadventure of Francis of Assisi (St Bonaventure, NY: The
Franciscan Institute, 2006).
Dalarun, Jacques. ‘À cette époque, le bienheureux François avait des cicatrices
aux mains et aux pieds et au côté’, in Discorsi sulle stimmate dal Medioevo
all’età contemporanea – Discours sur les stigmates du Moyen Âge à l’époque
contemporaine, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, Archivio italiano per la storia della
pietà 26 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013), 43–93.
D’Amato, C. ‘Terme e Cure Termali nell’Antica Roma’, in Terme Romane e
Vita Quotidiana: Supplemento all’Edizione Romana della Mostra (Rome)
(1989), 11–16.
Daremberg, Ch. and Edm. Saglio. Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et
romaines: d’après les textes et les monuments (Paris: Hachette, 1873–96).
Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
Dasen, Véronique. Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (Oxford: Oxford
Dasen, Véronique. ‘Nains et pygmées. Figures de l’altérité en Egypte et Grèce
anciennes’, in Penser et représenter le corps dans l’Antiquité, edited by Jérôme
Wilgaux and Francis Prost (Rennes: PUR, 2006) 95–113.
Dasen, Véronique. ‘“All Children are Dwarfs”. Medical Discourse and Icon-
ography of Children’s Bodies’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 27 (2008):
49–62.
Dasen, Véronique. ‘Le pouvoir des femmes: des Parques aux matres’, in Des
fata aux fees. Regards croisés de l’Antiquité à nos jours, edited by Martine
Bibliography 281
Hennard Dutheil and Véronique Dasen (Lausanne: Université de Lausanne,

2011), 115–46.
Dasen, Véronique. ‘Des artistes différents? Nains danseurs et musiciens dans le
monde hellénistique et romain’, in Le statut du musicien dans la Méditerranée
ancienne: Égypte, Mésopotamie, Grèce et Rome, edited by Sibylle Emerit (Le
Caire: IFAO, 2013) 259–77.
Dasen, Véronique and Jérôme Wilgaux, eds. Langages et métaphores du corps

dans l’Antiquité (Rennes: PUR, 2008).
Davidson, Arnold. ‘Miracles of Bodily Transformation, or, How St. Francis
Received the Stigmataî’, in Picturing Science, Producing Art, edited by
Caroline A. Jones, Peter Gallison and Amy Slaton (London: Routledge,
1998), 101–24.
Davis, Lennard J. Bending Over Backwards. Disability, Dismodernism, and Other
Difficult Positions. With A Foreword by Michael Bérubé (New York: New
York University Press, 2002).
Davis, Lennard J. ‘The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning of
Dismodernism. On Disability as an Unstable Category’, in Bending Over
Backwards. Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions. With
A Foreword by Michael Bérubé (New York: New York University Press,
2002), 9–32.
Delattre, Valérie and Ryadh Sallem, eds. Décrypter la différence: lecture
archéologique et historique de la place des personnes handicapées dans les
communautés du passé (Paris: CQFD, 2009).
Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination, translated by Barbara Johnson (London:
Athlone Press, 1981).
Di Capua, Francesco. ‘Appunti su l’origine e sviluppo delle terme romane’,
Accademia di architettura, lettere e belle arti 20 (1940): 81–160.
Dickison, Sheila K. ‘Claudius: Saturnalicus Princeps’, Latomus 36 (1977):
634–47.
Dickson, Gary. Religious Enthusiasm in Medieval West (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2000).
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Invention de l’Hystérie: Charcot et l’Iconographie
Photographique de la Salpêtrière (Paris: Macula, 1982).
Dinzelbacher, Peter. ‘Diesseits der Metapher: Selbstkreuzigung und Stigmat-
isation als konkrete Kreuzesnachfolge’, Revue Mabillon n.s. 7 (= 68) (1996):
157–81.
Duby, Georges. The Chivalrous Society (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles:
University of California Press 1980).
Ducourthial, Guy. Flore magique et astrologique de l’Anitiquité (Paris: Belin,
2003).
Dulieu, Louis. La médecine à Montpellier 1, Le Moyen Age (Avignon: Les Presses
Universelles, 1975).
Dvorjetski, Estee. Leisure, Pleasure and Healing: Spa Culture and Medicine in
the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Edlund-Berry, Ingrid. ‘Healing, Health and Well-Being: Archaeological Evidence
for Issues of Health Concerns in Ancient Italy’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte
8 (2006): 81–8.
Edlund-Berry, Ingrid. ‘Hot, Cold or Smelly: the Power of Sacred Water in Roman
Religion’, in Religion in Republican Italy, edited by Celia E. Schultz and Paul

B. Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 162–80.
Edwards, Catharine. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge:
Elliott, Dyan. Proving Women. Female Spirituality and Inquisitorial Culture in
the Late Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Emmett, Randolph Daniel. The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle
Ages (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1975).
Ernout, Alfred, and Antoine Meillet. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue
latine: histoire des mots (Paris: Klincksieck, 1985).
Eschebach, Hans. Die Arztehäuser in Pompeji (Antike Welt, Sondernummer
15, 1984).
Etkin, Nina. ‘Cultural constructions of efficacy’, in The Context of Medicines
in Developing Countries: Studies in Pharmaceutical Anthroplogy, edited by
Sjaak van der Geest and Susan Reynolds Whyte (Dodrecht: Kluwer, 1988),
299–326.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande
(Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1937).
Eyler, Joshua R., ed. Disability in the Middle Ages. Reconsiderations and
Reverberations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).
Fabbricotti, Emanuela. ‘I bagni nelle prime ville romane’, Cronache Pompeiane 2
(1976): 29–111.
Fagan, Garrett G. Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 1999).
Farmer, Sharon. Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris. Gender, Ideology, and
the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University
Press, 2006).
Farney, Gary D. Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic Competition in Republican Rome
Farrell, Joseph. ‘The Augustan Period: 40BC–AD14’, in Blackwell Companion to
Latin Literature, edited by Stephen Harrison (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2005), 44–57.
Fehr, Burkhard. ‘Entertainers at the Symposion: the akletoi in the Archaic
Period’, in Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposium, edited by Oswyn
Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 185–95.
Bibliography 283
Feldherr, Andrew. Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley, CA, and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).
Fernández, Emilio Mitre. ‘Muerte, veneno y enfermedad, metáforas medievales
de la herejía’, Heresis: revue d’histoire des dissidences européennes 25
(1995): 63–84.
Finucane, Ronald C. Miracles and Pilgrims. Popular Beliefs in Medieval England
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995 [1977]).

Finucane, Ronald C. The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in
Medieval Miracles (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997).
Flannery, Mary. ‘The Shame of a Rose: A Paradox’, in Guilt and Shame. Essays in
French Literature, Thought and Visual Culture, edited by Jenny Chamarette
and Jennifer Higgins (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 51–70.
Flory, David A. ‘The Social Uses of Religious Literature: Challenging Authority
in the Thirteenth-Century Marian Miracle’, Essays in Medieval Studies 13
(1996): 61–9.
Flower, Harriet I. ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman
Republic, edited by Harriet I. Flower (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 1–11.
Fontanella, Lucia, ed. Un volgarizzamento tardo duecentesco fiorentino
dell’Antidotarium Nicolai, Montréal, McGill University, Osler Library 7628
(Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000).
Forrest, Ian. The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England (Oxford and New
York: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 2005).
Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines
(Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966).
French, Valerie. ‘Midwives and maternity care in the Roman world’, in Rescuing
Creusa. New Methodological Approaches to Women in Antiquity, Helios 13,2,
edited by Marilyn B. Skinner (1986): 69–84.
Frohne, Bianca. ‘Skolastica ist plint. Überlegungen zu einer Disability History
der Vormoderne anhand familiengeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen des 15.
und 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Phänomene der ‘Behinderung’ im Alltag – Bausteine
zu einer Disability History der Vormoderne, edited by Cordula Nolte
(Affalterbach: Didymos, 2013), 37–58.
Frohne, Bianca. Leben mit ‘kranckhait’. Der gebrechliche Körper in der häuslichen
Überlieferung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Überlegungen zu einer Disability
History der Vormoderne (Affalterbach: Didymos, 2014).
Frugoni, Chiara. Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate. Una storia per parole e
immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (Torino: Einaudi, 1993).
Gaposchkin, Cecilia M. ‘Place, Status, and Experience in the Miracles of Saint
Louis’, Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes 19 (2010): 249–66.
García-Ballester, Luis, Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga and Andrew Cunning-

ham, eds. Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death (Cambridge:
Garland, Robert. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Greco-
Roman World (New York: Cornell University Press, 1995).
Garmaise, Michael. ‘Studies in the Representation of Dwarfs in Hellenistic and
Roman Art’. PhD diss. McMaster University, 1998.

Garnier, Gabriel, Lucienne Bézanger-Beauquesne and Germaine Debraux.
Ressources médicinales de la flore française (Paris: Vigot frères, 1961).
Gascou, Jacques. Suétone Historien (Rome: École française de Rome, 1984).
Gasparri, Carlo. ‘Bacchus’, in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae 3
(Zürich and München: Artemis, 1992), 540–566.
Gasperini, Lidio. Scoperte archeologiche a Stigliano (Canale Monterano). Quaderni
della ‘Forum Clodii’ no. 3 (Bracciano: Associazione Forum Clodii, 1976).
Gasperini, Lidio. ‘Gli Etruschi e le Sorgenti Termali’, Etruria Meridionale:
conoscenza, conservazione, fruizione: Atti del Convegno, Viterbo, 29/30
novembre–1 dicembre 1985 (Rome: Casa Editrice Quasar, 1988), 27–35.
Gentilcore, David. Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1998).
Gerber, David A. ‘Preface to the Enlarged and Revised Edition: The Continuing
Relevance of the Study of Disabled Veterans’, in Disabled Veterans in History,
Enlarged and Revised Edition, edited by David A. Gerber (Ann Arbor, MI:
The University of Michigan Press, 2012), ix–xxiii.
Geremek, Bronisław. The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1987, 1991]).
Ghadiri, Maryam Khaleghi and Ali Gorji. ‘Natural Remedies for Impotence
in Medieval Persia’, International Journal of Impotence Research 16 (2004):
80–83.
Ginouvès, René. Balaneutikè. Recherches sur le bain dans antiquité grecque,
BEFAR 200 (Paris: De Boccard, 1962).
Ginouvès, René. ‘L’Eau dans les Sanctuaires Médicaux’, Bulletin de Correspondance
Hellenique, Supplement 28 (1994): 237–43.
Ginsburg, Judith. Representing Agrippina. Constructions of Female Power in the
Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Girardot, Jean-François. ‘Cherchez l’esclave! Ou quelques réflexions sur les
documents figurés de l’archaïsme et du classicisme grec’, Dialogues d’histoire
ancienne 15 (1989): 399–433.
Giuliani, Lucas. ‘Die seligen Krüppel. Zur Deutung von Missgestalten in der
hellenistischen Kleinkunst’, Archäologischer Anzeiger 102 (1987): 701–21.
Glinister, Fay. ‘Reconsidering “religious Romanization”’, in Religion in
Republican Italy, edited by Celia E. Schultz and Paul B. Harvey (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006): 10–33.
Bibliography 285
Goetz, Hans-Werner. ‘Vorstellungen von menschlicher Gebrechlichkeit in

frühen Mittelalter’, in Homo debilis. Behinderte – Kranke – Versehrte in
der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, edited by Cordula Nolte (Affalterbach:
Didymos, 2009), 21–55.
Goldstein, Jan E. ‘The Hysteria Diagnosis and the Politics of Anticlericalism
in Late Nineteenth-Century France’, Journal of Modern History 54
(1982): 209–39.
Golinelli, Paolo. ‘Social Aspects in Some Italian Canonization Trials. The
Choice of Witnesses’, in Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects
juridiques et religieux, edited by Gábor Klaniczay (Rome: École Française de
Rome, 2004), 165–80.
Goodey, C.F. A History of Intelligence and ‘Intellectual Disability’: The Shaping of
Psychology in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).
Goodey, C.F. and Martha Lynn Rose. ‘Mental States, Bodily Dispositions and
Table Manners’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity: Disparate Bodies a capite
ad calcem, edited by Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose (Leiden:
Brill, 2013), 17–44.
Goodich, Michael, E. ‘Filiation and Form in the Late Medieval Miracle Story’,
Hagiographica 3 (1976): 306–22.
Goodich, Michael, E. Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth-Century. Private
Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1995).
Goodich, Michael E. Other Middle Ages. Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval
Society (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
Goodich, Michael, E. ‘The Miraculous Military Espace in Canonization
Documents’, in Lives and Miracles of the Saints. Studies in Medieval
Hagiography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), Chapter XIX.
Goodich, Michael, E. ‘Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis. Social History and Medieval
Miracles’, in Signs, Wonders, Miracles. Representations of Divine Power in the
Life of Church, edited by Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge:
The Boydell Press, 2005), 143–4.
Goodich, Michael, E. Miracles and Wonders. The Development of the Concept of
Miracle, 1150–1350 (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007).
Gordon, Sarah. ‘Representations of Aging and Disability in Early Sixteenth-
Century France’, in Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, edited by Albrecht Classen
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 421–36.
Gorman, Robert J. and Vanessa B. Gorman. ‘The Tryphê of the Sybarites: a
Historiographical Problem in Athenaeus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 127
(2007): 38–60.
Gourevich, Danielle. Maladie et maladies. Histoire et Conceptualisation, edited
by Danielle Gourevitch (Paris: Librairie Droz, 1992).
Gourevich, Danielle. ‘La cuisine du corps feminine: L’eau dans le livre III du
traité gynécologique de Soranos d’Éphèse’, in L’eau, la santé et la maladie
dans le mond Grec, Actes du colloque organisé à Paris du 25 au 27 novembre
1992, BCH Suppl. XXVIII, edited by René Ginouvès, Anne-Marie Guimier-
Sorbets, Jacques Jouanna and Laurence Villard (Paris: De Boccard, 1994),
95–107.
Grassl, Herbert. ‘Behinderte in der Antike. Bemerkungen zur sozialen Stellung

und Integration’, Tyche 1 (1986): 118–26.
Green, C.M.C. Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia (Cambridge:
Green, Monica. ‘Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval
Europe’, Signs 14 (1989): 434–73.
Green, Monica. The Trotula (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press,
2002).
Green, Monica. Making Women’s Medicine Masculine. The Rise of Male Authority
in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Green, Monica. ‘Integrative Medicine. Incorporating Medicine and Health into
the Canon of Medieval European History’, History Compass 7/4 (2009):
1218–45.
Grmek, Mirko D. Les maladies à l’aube de la civilisation occidentale (Paris: Payot,
1983): 21–30.
Grossgrove, William. ‘The Vernacularization of Science, Medicine, and
Technology in Late Medieval Europe. Broadening Our Perspectives’, Early
Science Medicine 5 (2000): 47–63.
Guaitoli, M. ‘Gabii’, La Parola del Passato, 36 (1981): 152–73.
Gumucio, Juan Carlos. Hierarchy, utility and metaphor in Mapuche botany
(Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1999).
Gurevich, Aaron J. ‘Oral and written culture of the Middle Ages. Two “Peasant
Visions” of the Late Twelfth-Early Thirteenth Centuries’, New Literary
History 16 (1984): 51–66.
Gurval, Robert Alan. Actium and Augustus. The Politics and Emotions of Civil
War (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
Götlind, Anna. ‘Technology and Religion in Medieval Sweden’. PhD diss.
University of Gothenburg, 1993.
Habinek, Thomas N. The Politics of Latin literature: Writing, Identity, and
Empire in Ancient Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
Haemmerle, Albert. Derer von Stetten Geschlechterbuch (Munich: Haemmerle,
1955).
Hamburger, Jeffrey F. The Visual and the Visionary. Art and Female Spirituality
in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998).
Hamburger, Jeffrey F. and Gabriela Signori, eds. Catherine of Siena, the Creation
of a Cult, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).
Bibliography 287
Hamilton, Bernard. The Leper King and His Heirs. Baldwin IV and the Crusader
Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Hanska, Jussi. ‘The Hanging of William Cragh: Anatomy of a Miracle’, Journal
of Medieval History 27 (2001): 121–38.
Hanska, Jussi. ‘From Historical Event to Didactic Story. Medieval Miracle
Stories as a Means of Communication’, in Changing Minds. Communication
and Influence in the High and Later Middle Ages, edited by Christian Krötzl
and Miikka Tamminen (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2013),
87–106.
Hanson, K., T. Neuman and S.G. Carlsson. Understanding the Health Care
Needs and Experiences of People with Disabilities (Washington, DC: Kaiser
Family Foundation, 2003).
Harari, Maurizio. ‘A Short History of Pygmies in Greece and Italy’, in Greek
Identity in the Western Mediterranean, Papers in Honour of Brian Shefton,
edited by Kathryn Lomas (Leiden: Brill, 2004) 163–90.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Renaissance Military Memoirs. War, History, and Identity,
1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004).
Harig, Georg. ‘Die antike Auffassung vom Gift und der Tod des Mithridates’,
Schriftenreihe für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin
14 (1977), 104–12.
Harlow, Mary and Ray Laurence. Growing Up and Growing Old in Ancient
Rome – A Life Course Approach (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002).
Harrison, Stephen. ‘Decline and Nostalgia’, in Blackwell Companion to Latin
Literature, edited by Stephen Harrison (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2005), 287–99.
Harris, William V. ‘Child Exposure in the Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman
Studies 84 (1994): 1–22.
Harris, William V. Restraining Rage. The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical
Antiquity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Hartung, Edward Frederick. ‘St. Francis and Medieval Medicine’, Annals of
Medical History 7 (1935): 85–91.
Haupt, Herman. ‘Waldenserthum und Inquisition im südöstlichen Deutsch-
land seit der Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichts-
wissenschaft 3 (1890): 337–411.
Heimann, Heinz-Dieter. Wie men wol eyn statt regyrn sol. Didaktische Literatur
und berufliche Schreiben des Johann von Soest, gen. Steinwert (Soest: Mocker
u. Jahn, 1986).
Heller, Tamar and Sarah Parker Harris. Disability through the Life Course
(London: Sage, 2012).
Herlihy, David. Medieval Households (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1985).
Hermann, Alfred. ‘Das erste Bad des Heilands und des Helden’, Jahrbuch für
Antike und Christentum 10 (1967): 64–78.
Hersch, Karen K. The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity

Herzig, Tamar. Savonarola’s Women. Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008).
Herzig, Tamar. Christ Transformed into a Virgin Woman. Lucia Brocadelli,
Heinrich Institoris, and the Defense of the Faith (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, 2013).
Hiestand, Rudolf. ‘Kranker König – kranker Bauer’, in Der kranke Mensch in
Mittelalter und Renaissance, edited by Peter Wunderli (Düsseldorf: Droste
Verlag, 1986), 61–77.
Hjortsberg, Catharina. ‘Why do the sick not utilise health care? The case of
Zambia’, Health Economics 12 (2003): 755–70.
Horden, Peregrine. ‘A Non-natural Environment: Medicine without Doctors
and the Medieval European Hospital’, in The Medieval Hospital and Medical
Practice, edited by Barbara S. Bowers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 133–45.
Horden, Peregrine. ‘What’s Wrong with Early Medieval Medicine?’, Social
History of Medicine 24 (2011): 5–25.
Horn, Cornelia B. ‘A Nexus of Disability in Ancient Greet Miracle Stories: A
Comparison of Accounts of Blindness from the Asklepieion in Epidauros
and the Shrine of Thecla in Seleucia’, in Disabilities in Roman Antiquity:
Disparate Bodies a capite ad calcem, edited by Christian Laes, C.F. Goodey
and M. Lynn Rose (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 115–43.
Horn, Klaus-Peter and Bianca Frohne. ‘On the Fluidity of “Disability” in
Medieval and Early Modern Societies. Opportunities and Strategies in a New
Field of Research’, in The Imperfect Historian. Disability Histories in Europe,
edited by Sebastian Barsch, Anne Klein and Pieter Verstraete (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 17–40.
Hughes, B. and K. Paterson. ‘The Social Model of Disability and the
Disappearing Body: Towards a Sociology of Impairment’, Disability and
Society 12/3 (1997): 325–40.
Hunt, Tony. Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England: Introduction and
Texts (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1990).
Hurley, Donna. Suetonius Divus Claudius (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001).
Huskinson, Janet. ‘Disappearing children? Children in Roman Funerary art
of the first to the fourth century AD’, in Hoping for Continuity: Childhood,
Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, edited by Katariina
Mustakallio, Jussi Hanska, Hanna-Leena Sainio and Ville Vuolanto (Rome:
Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2005), 91–103.
Hänninen, Marja-Leena. ‘From womb to family. Rituals and social conventions
connected to Roman birth’, in Hoping for Continuity: Childhood, Education
and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, edited by Katariina Mustakallio,
Bibliography 289
Jussi Hanska, Hanna-Leena Sainio and Ville Vuolanto (Roma: Institutum

Romanum Finlandiae, 2005), 49–60.
Imbert-Gourbeyre, Docteur. Les stigmatisées. Louise Lateau de Bois-d’Haine et
Palma d’Oria (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1873), I–II.
Imbert-Gourbeyre, Docteur. La Stigmatisation. Édition établie par Joachim
Bouflet (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1996).
Immonen, Teemu. ‘Building the Cassinese Monastic Identity: A Reconstruction

of the Fresco Program of the Desiderian Basilica (1071)’. PhD diss. University
of Helsinki, 2012.
Irvine, Martin. The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory,
350–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Isager, K. Skeletfundene ved Øm Kloster (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgård,
1936).
Jackson, Ralph. ‘Waters and Spas in the Classical World’, in The Medical History
of Waters and Spas, edited by Roy Porter (London: Wellcome Institute for
the History of Medicine, 1990), 1–13.
Jackson, Ralph. ‘Spas, waters and hydrotherapy in the Roman World’, in Roman
Baths and Bathing v.1: Bathing and Society, v.2: Design and Context, edited
by Janet Delaine and David E. Johnston (Portsmouth: 1999), 107–16.
Jackson, Stanley W. Melancholia and Depression. From Hippocratic Times to
Modern times (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1986).
Jacobs, Ingrid, ed. Geschiedenis van Amersfoort. ‘Bruit van d’Eem’ (Utrecht:
Uitgeverij Matrijs 2009).
Jacquart, Danielle. Le milieu médical en France du XIIe au XVe siècle. En
annexe 2e supplément au ‘Dictionnaire’ d’Ernest Wickersheimer (Paris:
Champion, 1981).
Jacquart, Danielle and Claude Thomasset. Sexualité et savoir médical au Moyen
Age (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1985).
Jaeger, Mary. Livy’s Written Rome (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press, 1997).
Janse, Antheun. ‘Marriage and Noble Lifestyle in Holland in the Late Middle
Ages’, in Showing Status. Representations of Social Positions in the Late Middle
Ages, edited by Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse (Turnhout: Brepols,
1999), 113–38.
Jaritz, Gerhard. ‘“Young, Rich, and Beautiful”. The Visualization of Male Beauty
in the Middle Ages’, in The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many
Ways. Festschrift in Honour of János M. Bak, edited by Balázs Nagy and
Marcell Sebők (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 61–78.
Jaser, Christian. Ecclesia maledicens: rituelle und zeremonielle Exkommunika-
tionsformen im Mittelalter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
Jordan, Gesine. ‘Kranke Herrscher und Herrschaftsanwärter in der
Karolingerzeit’, in Homo debilis. Behinderte – Kranke – Versehrte in der
Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, edited by Cordula Nolte (Affalterbach:

Didymos, 2009), 243–62.
Kampen, Natalie Boymel. ‘Biographical Narration and Roman Funerary Art’,
AJA 85 (1981): 47–58.
Kaplan, Benjamin J. ‘Possessed by the Devil? A Very Public Dispute in Utrecht’,
Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996): 738–59.
Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others (London:
Routledge, 2005).
Karras, Ruth Mazo. Unmarriages. Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle
Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari, Gender, Miracles, and Daily Life. The Evidence of
Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes (Brepols: Turnhout, 2009).
Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari. ‘A Good Wife? Demonic Possession and Discourses of
Gender in Late Medieval Culture’, in Gender in Late Medieval and Early
Modern Europe, edited by Marianna Muravyeva and Raisa Maria Tovio
(New York: Routledge, 2013), 73–88.
Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari. ‘Demonic Possession as Physical and Mental
Disturbance in the Later Medieval Canonization Processes’, in Mental
(Dis)Order in Later Medieval Europe, edited by Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and
Susanna Niiranen (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 108–26.
Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari, and Susanna Niiranen, eds. Mental (Dis)Order in Later
Medieval Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
Kemperink, J.H.P. ‘Johan van Ingen: geschiedenissen’, Archief voor de geschiedenis
van het aartsbisdom Utrecht 74 (1957): 1–155.
Kennedy, Duncan F. ‘“Augustan” and “Anti-Augustan”: Reflections on Terms of
Reference’, in Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, edited by
Anton Powell (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1992), 26–58.
Kerr, Julie. Life in the Medieval Cloister (London: Continuum 2009).
Kerth, Sonja. ‘Die letzten taflrunder? Krieg in adligen Autobiographien des 15.
und 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Dulce bellum inexpertis. Bilder des Krieges in der
deutschen Literatur des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, edited by Horst Brunner et
al. (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2002), 175–245.
Kienzle, Beverly Mayne. ‘The Bestiary of Heretics. Imaging Medieval Christian
Heresy with Insects and Animals’, in Communion of Subjects: Animals in
Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Kimberley Patton and Paul Waldau
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 103–16.
King, Helen, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece
(London, New York: Routledge, 1998).
King, Helen and Véronique Dasen. La Médecine dans l’Antiquité grecque et
romaine (Lausanne: Éditions BHMS, 2008).
Bibliography 291
Klaniczay, Gábor. ‘Miracoli di punizione e maleficia’, in Miracoli. Dai segni alla

storia, edited by Sofia Boesch Gajano and Marilena Modica (Rome: Viella,
2000), 109–36.
Klaniczay, Gábor. ‘Speaking about Miracles: Oral Testimony and Written
Record in Medieval Canonization Trials’, in The Development of Literate
Mentalities in East Central Europe, edited by Anna Adamska and Marco
Mostert (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 365–95.

Klaniczay, Gábor, ed. Discorsi sulle stimmate dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea –
Discours sur les stigmates du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine, in Archivio
italiano per la storia della pietà 26 (2013): 7–386.
Klaniczay, Gábor. ‘Louise Lateau et les stigmatisées du XIXème siècle entre
directeurs spirituels, dévots, psychologues et médecins’, in Discorsi sulle
stimmate dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea – Discours sur les stigmates du
Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine, edited by Gábor Klaniczay (Rome:
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013), 279–320.
Kleinberg, Aviad M. Prophets in Their Own Country. Living Saints and the
Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, IL, and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Koenen, Ludwig. ‘Greek, The Near East, and Egypt: Cyclic Destruction
in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women’, Transactions of the American
Philological Association 124 (1994): 1–34.
Koopmans, Rachel. Wonderful to Relate. Miracle Stories and Miracle Collecting
in High Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2011).
Kossatz-Deissmann, Anneliese, s.v. ‘Semele’, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae (Zürich and München: Artemis, 1991), 718–26.
Krötzl, Christian. ‘Parent-Child Relations in Medieval Scandinavia According
to Scandinavian Miracle Collections’, Scandinavian Journal of History 14
(1989): 21–37.
Krötzl, Christian. Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag: Formen des Verhaltens im
skandinavischen Mittelalter (12.–15. Jahrhundert) (Helsinki: SHS, 1994).
Krötzl, Christian. ‘Prokuratoren, Notare und Dolmetscher. Zu Gestaltung und
Ablauf der Zeugeneinvernahmen bei spätmittelalterlichen Kanonisations-
prozessen’, Hagiographica 5 (1998): 119–40.
Krötzl, Christian. ‘Miracles au tombeau – miracles à distance. Approches
typologiques’, in Miracle et karama, edited by Denise Aigle (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2000), 557–76.
Krötzl, Christian. ‘“Sexaginta vel circa”. Zur Wahrnehmung von Alter
in hagiographischen Quellen des Spätmittelalters’, in Alterskulturen
des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Österreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, Bd. 780, edited by Elisabeth Vavra (Vienna,
2008), 109–15.
Krötzl, Christian. ‘How to Choose a Saint. On Propagation, Advice and

Decision-Making in Medieval Communities’, in Agiografia e culture popolari.
Hagiography and Popular Cultures. In Ricordo di Pietro Boglioni, edited by
Paolo Golinelli (Bologna: CLUEB, 2012), 371–87.
Kruisheer, C.I. Onze Lieve Vrouwe-broederschap te Doesburg, ca. 1397–1580.
Godsdienstige broederschappen en hun achtergrond. Bloeiperiode van de
O.L. Vrouwe-broederschap, neergang door kentering in het geloofsleven. Het

memorieboek als bron van genealogische gegevens (Arnhem: Gysbers & Van
Loon, 1976).
Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid, 22 vols, edited by John Granlund
and others (Copenhagen: 1958).
Kuuliala, Jenni. ‘Disability and Social Integration. Constructions of Childhood
Impairments in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Canonization Processes’.
PhD diss. University of Tampere, 2013.
Kuuliala, Jenni. ‘Love and Duty in the Time of Family Crisis. Physical Disability
and Marriage in Later Medieval (c. 1200–1500) Miracle Testimonies’,
Mirator 14/2 (2013): 111–22.
Künzl, Ernst. ‘L. J. Bliquez und die medizinische Instrumente aus Pompeji: Die
medizinische Versorgung einer römischen Stadt im 1. Jh. N.Chr’, JRA 12
(1999): 575–92.
Künzl, Ernst and Susanna Künzl. ‘Aquae Apollinares/Vicarello (Italien)’, in Les
Eaux thermales et les cultes des eaux en Gaule et dans les provinces voisine:
Actes du colloque, 28–30 septembre 1990, edited by R. Chevallier (Aix-les-
Bains: Centre de recherches A. Piganiol, 1992), 273–96.
Köpf, Ulrich. ‘Die Stigmata des Franziskus von Assisi’, in Zwischen Himmel und
Erde. Körperliche Zeichen der Heiligkeit, edited by Waltraud Pulz (Stuttgart:
Steiner, 2012), 35–60.
Köves-Zulauf, Thomas. Römische Geburtsriten (München: C.H. Beck, 1990).
Lachapelle, Sofie. ‘Between Miracle and Sickness: Louise Lateau and the
Experience of Stigmata and Ecstasy’, Configurations 12 (2004): 77–105.
Laes, Christian. ‘Learning from Silence: Disabled Children in Roman Antiquity’,
Arctos 42 (2008): 85–122.
Laes, Christian. Children in the Roman Empire: Outsiders Within (Cambridge:
Laes, Christian. ‘Disabled Children in Gregory of Tours’, in The Dark Side of
Childhood in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Unwanted, Disabled and
Lost, edited by Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Laes (Oxford: Oxbow,
2011), 39–64.
Laes, Christian. ‘Silent Witnesses. Deaf-mutes in Greco-Roman Antiquity’,
Class World 104/4 (2011): 451–73.
Bibliography 293
Laes, Christian. ‘Raising a Disabled Child’, in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood

and Education in the Classical World, edited by Judith Evans Grubbs and
Tim Parkin with Roslynne Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Laes, Christian, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose, eds. Disabilities in Roman
Antiquity: Disparate Bodies a capite ad calcem (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Largier, Niklas. In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (New York:
Zone Books, 2007).

Larner, John. Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216–1380, A Longman
History of Italy (London and New York: Longman, 1981).
Larrington, Carolyne. ‘The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval
Period’, Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001): 251–6.
Laslett, Peter. ‘Family, Kinship, and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-
Industrial Europe: A Consideration of the Nuclear-Hardship Hypothesis’,
Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 153–75.
Lawlor, Clark. From Melancholia to Prozac, A History of Depression (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012).
Lejeune, Michel, Méfitis d’après les dédicaces lucaniennes de Rossano di Vaglio
(Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1990).
Lenfant, Dominique. ‘Monsters in Greek Ethnography and Society in the
Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE’, in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the
Development of Greek Thought, edited by Richard Buxton (Oxford: Oxford
Leonardi, Claudio. ‘La vita di Domenica Lazzeri da Capriana’, in La santità del
Tirolo. Domenica Lazzeri da Capriano, edited by Ludmila Vesely Leonardi
(Rovereto: Longo editore, 1991), 15–37.
Lepowsky, Maria. ‘Sorcery and penicillin: Treating illness on a Papua New
Guinea island’, Social Science & Medicine 30.10 (1990): 104–63.
Lett, Didier. L’enfant des miracles: enface et société au Moyen Age, XIIe–XIIIe
siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1997).
Lett, Didier. Un procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Essai d’histoire sociale.
Nicolas de Tolentino, 1325 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008).
Levene, D.S. ‘Roman Historiography in the Late Republic’, in Blackwell
Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, edited by John Marincola
(Malden, Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 275–89.
Levick, Barbara. Claudius (London: Routledge, 1990).
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1966).
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae VII (Zürich/München: Artemis
Verlag, 1994).
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Supplementum I–II (Düsseldorf:
Artemis Verlag, 2009).
Lieutaghi, Pierre. ‘Le végétal: pratique d’un monde périlleux’, Ethnologie française
34.3 (2004): 397–406.
Linkinen, Tom. ‘Stinking deed, deepest love: Same-sex sexuality in later medieval
English culture’. PhD diss. University of Turku, 2013.
Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability. Knowledge and Identity (New York: New
York University Press, 1998).
Lissarrague, François. La cité des satyres. Une anthropologie ludique (Athènes,

VIe–Ve siècles avant J.-C.) (Paris: Editions EHESS, 2013).
Lloyd, Geoffrey E.R. Science, Folklore and Ideology. Studies in the Life Sciences in
Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Lloyd-Jones, Hugh and Peter Parsons, eds. Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1983).
Lochrie, Karma, Peggy McCracken and James A. Schultz, eds. Constructing
Medieval Sexuality (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
Longpré, E. ed. ‘Fr. Rogeri Marston et Anonymi Doctoris O.F.M. quaestiones
ineditae de B. Francisci stigmatibus’, Antonianum 7 (1932): 239–244.
Luce, T.J. Livy, The Composition of his History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Lugli, G. Forma Italiae Regio I, v.1.1: Ager Pomptinus: Anxur-Tarracina (Rome:
Danesi, 1927).
Luzzato, Sergio. Padre Pio. Miracoli e politica nell’Italia del Novecento (Torino:
Einaudi, 2007).
Lynch, Katherine. Individuals, Families and Communities in Europe (Cambridge:
Lösch, Sandra, Stefanie Panzer and Andreas G. Nerlich. ‘Cerebral Paralysis
in an Ancient Egyptian Female Mummy from a 13th Dynasty Tomb –
Palaeopathological and Radiological Investigations’, in Behinderungen und
Beeinträchtigungen/Disability and Impairment in Antiquity, edited by
Rupert Breitwieser (Oxford: Oxbow, 2012), 37–40.
Macé, Alcide, Essai sur Suétone (Paris: 1900).
Machilek, Franz. ‘Aufschwung und Niedergang der Zusammenarbeit
von Waldensern und Hussiten im 15. Jahrhundert (unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Verhältnisse in Deutschland)’, in Friedrich Reiser und
die ‘waldensisch-hussitische Internationale’ im 15. Jahrhundert : Akten der
Tagung Ötisheim-Schönenberg, 2. bis 4. Oktober 2003, edited by Albert de
Lange and Kathrin Utz Tremp (Heidelberg, Ubstadt-Weiher and Basel:
Verlag Regionalkultur, 2006), 277–316.
Maier, Christoph T. ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997): 628–57.
Maier, Christoph T. Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the
Preaching of the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Bibliography 295
Maioli, Maria Grazia and Attilio Mastrocinque. La Stipe di Villa di Villa e i Culti
degli Antichi Veneti (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 1992).
Manderscheid, Hubertus. Die Skulpturenausstattung der kaiserzeitlichen
Thermenanlagen (Berlin: Mann, 1981).
Manderscheid, Hubertus. ‘Römische Thermen: Aspekte von Architektur,
Technik und Ausstattung’, in Geschichte der Wasserversorgung, Vol. 3, Die
Wasserversorgung antiker Städte (Mainz: Verlag Phillip von Zabern in

Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988).
Maniura, Robert. Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century. The Origins of
the Cult of Our Lady of Częstochowa (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004).
Marganne, Marie-Hélène. ‘Étiquettes de médicamentes, listes de drogues,
prescriptions et réceptaires dans l’Égypte gréco-romaine et byzantine’, in
Pharmacopoles et apothicaires. Les «pharmaciens» de l’Antiquité au Grand
Siècle, edited by Franck Collard and Évelyne Samama (Paris: L’Harmattan,
2006), 59–73.
Maria, Sandro de. ‘Un bronzetto da Bakchias (Fayyum) e la serie dei nani
danzanti ellenistici’, OCNUS 7 (1999): 45–68.
Marincola, John. ‘Introduction’, in Blackwell Companion to Greek and Roman
Historiography, edited by John Marincola (Malden, Oxford and Carlton:
Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 1–10.
Marini, Paolo. ‘Racconto spontaneo o memoria costruita ? Testi a confronto
in alcuni processi di canonizzazione del secolo decimoquarto’, Mélanges de
l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 108 (1996): 259–319.
Martschukat, Jürgen and Steffen Patzold. ‘Geschichtswissenschaft und
“performative turn”. Eine Einführung in Fragestellungen, Konzepte
und Literatur’, in Geschichtswissenschaft und ‘performative turn’. Ritual,
Inszenierung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit, edited by
Jürgen Martschukat and Steffen Patzold (Böhlau: Köln, 2003), 1–33.
Mason, Sarah L.R. ‘Acornutopia? Determining the role of acorns in past human
subsistence’, in Food in Antiquity, edited by John Wilkins, David Harvey and
Mike Dobson (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1995), 12–24.
Matthäus, Hartmut. Der Arzt in römischer Zeit. Medizinische Instrumente und
Arzneien (Aalen: Schriften des Limesmuseums Aalen, 1987).
Matz, Friedrich. Die dionysischen Sarkophage (Berlin: Mann, 1969).
McDougal, Ian. ‘The Third Instrument of Medicine. Some Account of Surgery
in Medieval Iceland’, in Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture,
edited by Sheila D. Campbell, Bert S. Hall and David Klausner (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 57–83.
McVaugh, Michael. Medicine before the Plague. Practitioners and Their Patients
in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–1345 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
Medri, M., G. Soricelli and A. Benini. ‘In Bainao Sinu: le Piccole Terme di
Baia’, in Roman Baths and Bathing v.1: Bathing and Society, v.2: Design and
Context (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 37), edited by
Janet Delaine and David E. Johnston (Portsmouth: 1999), 207–19.
Mehl, Andreas. Roman Historiography: An Introduction to Its Basic Aspects and
Development, translated by H.-F. Mueller (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
Mellyn, Elizabeth W. Mad Tuscans and Their Families. A History of Mental

Disorder in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2014).
Melville, Gert. ‘Stephan von Obazine: Begründung und Überwindung
charismatischer Führung’, in Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaften im
Mittelalter, edited by Giancarlo Andenna, Mirko Breitenstein and Gert
Melville (Münster: LIT, 2005), 85–102.
Menchi, Silvana Seidel. ‘The Girl and the Hourglass: Periodization of Women’s
Lives in Western Preindustrial Societies’, in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in
Early Modern Europe, edited by Anne Jackson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn and
Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville, Missouri, MO: Truman State University
Press, 2001), 41–74.
Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe. Thinking about Physical Impairment
during the High Middle Ages, C.1100–1400 (London: Routledge, 2006).
Metzler, Irina. ‘Reflections on Disability in Medieval Legal Texts: Exclusion –
Protection – Compensation’, in Disability and Medieval Law. History,
Literature, Society, edited by Cory James Rushton (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 19–53.
Metzler, Irina. A Social History of Disability. Cultural Considerations of Physical
Impairment (London: Routledge, 2013).
Meyer, Heinz. ‘Bartholomäus Anglicus, “de proprietatibus rerum” Selbstver-
ständnis und Rezeption’, Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum 99 (1988): 237–74.
Meyer, Paul. ‘Recettes médicales en provençal’, Romania 32 (1903): 268–99.
Meyer-Schilf, Karolina. ‘dazu jch jedem raten wil / er buw vff kriegen nit zu
vil – Grundüberlegungen und Forschungsperspektiven zum Umgang mit
Kriegsinvalidität im Spätmittelalter’, in Phänomene der ‘Behinderung’ im
Alltag – Bausteine zu einer Disability History der Vormoderne, edited by
Cordula Nolte (Affalterbach: Didymos, 2013), 113–23.
Miari, Monica. Stipi Votive dell’Etruria Padana. Corpus delle Stipi Votive in Italia
XI, Regio III.3, Archeologica v.128 (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 2000).
Miccoli, Giovanni. ‘Considerazioni sulle stimmate’, in Atti della tavola rotonda,
Assisi, 1997, 13–39, reprinted in Franciscana, 1 (Perugia: Santa Maria degli
Angeli, 1999), 101–21.
Miles, Gary. Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell
Bibliography 297
Minnis, Alastair. Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature.

Valuing the Vernacular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Mitchell, Alexandre G. Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of visual Humour
Modestin, Georg. Ketzer in der Stadt: der Prozess gegen die Strassburger
Waldenser von 1400. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Studien und Texte,
Bd. 41 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2007).

Modestin, Georg. ‘The Anti-Waldensian Treatise Cum Dormirent Homines:
Historical Context, Polemical Strategy, and Manuscript Tradition’, in
Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536, edited by Michael Van Dussen
and Pavel Soukup (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 211–29.
Moore, R.I. ‘Heresy as Disease’, in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages
(11th–13th C.), Proceedings of the international conference Louvain May
13–16, 1973, edited by W. Lordaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven: Leuven
Morpurgo, L. ‘Teatro ed altri edifici romani in contrada La Valle’, in Notizie degli
Scavi d’Antichità n.s. 7, (1931), 237–305.
Muessig, Carolyn. ‘Performance of the Passion: The Enactment of Devotion in
the Later Middle Ages’, in Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives,
Histories, Contexts, edited by Elina Gertsman (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2008), 129–42.
Muessig, Carolyn. ‘The Stigmata Debate in Theology and Art in the Late
Middle Ages’, in The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in
Northern Europe, 1400–1700, edited by Celeste Brusati, Karl Enenkel and
Walter Melion (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 481–504.
Muessig, Carolyn. ‘Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality
before Francis of Assisi’, Church History 82 (2013): 40–68.
Muessig, Carolyn, George Ferzoco and Beverly Mayne Kienzle, eds. A Companion
to Catherine of Siena (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Murison, Charles. Suetonius: Galba, Otho, Vitellius (London: Bristol Classical
Press, 1992).
Mustakallio, Katariina. Sive deus sive dea. La presenza della religione nello sviluppo
della società romana, translated by Donatella Puliga (Pisa: ETS, 2013).
Møller-Christensen, Vilhelm. Bogen om Aebelholt Kloster (Copenhagen: Dansk
videnskabs forlag, 1958).
Nagy, Piroska. ‘Sensations et émotions d’une femme de passion: Lukarde
d’Oberweimar († 1309)’, in Le sujet des émotions au Moyen Age, edited by
Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy (Paris, Beauchesne, 2009), 323–53.
Nagy, Piroska. ‘Sharing Charismatic Authority by Body and Emotions: The
Marvellous Life of Lukardis von Oberweimar (c. 1262–1309)’, in Shaping
Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited
by Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014).
Nicolai, Roberto. ‘The Place of History in the Ancient World’, in Blackwell

Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, edited by John Marincola
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 13–26.
Nielsen, Inge. Thermae et Balnea: The Architecture and Cultural History of
Roman Public Baths (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990).
Nielsen, Inge. ‘For Pleasure and Leisure: The Baths and the Theatre’, in I Dianas
Hellige Lund: Fund fra en Helligdom i Nemi, edited by Mette Moltesen

(Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 1997), 187–90.
Niiranen, Susanna. ‘At the Crossroads of Religion, Magic, Science and Written
culture. The Role of Textual Amulets in Medieval Healing’, in Mental Health,
Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, edited by
Albrecth Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter 2014), 290–313.
Njus, Jesse. ‘The Politics of Mysticism: Elisabeth of Spalbeek in Context’, Church
History 77 (2008): 285–317.
Nolte, Cordula, ed. Homo debilis. Behinderte – Kranke – Versehrte in der
Gesellschaft des Mittelalters (Affalterbach: Didymos, 2009).
Nolte, Cordula, ed. Phänomene der ‘Behinderung’ im Alltag. Bausteine zu einer
Disability History der Vormoderne (Affalterbach: Didymos, 2013).
Oakley, S.P. ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy on the Horatii and the
Curiatii’, in Ancient Historiography and its Contexts. Studies in Honour of
A.J. Woodman, edited by Christina S. Kraus, John Marincola and Christopher
Pelling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 118–38.
O’Boyle, Cornelius. The Art of Medicine: Medical Teaching at the University of
Paris, 1250–1400. (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
Ochsenbein, Peter. ‘Die Offenbarungen Elsbeths von Oye als Dokument
leidensfixierter Mystik’, in Abendländische Mystik im Mittelter: Symposium
Kloster Engelberg 1984, edited by Kurt Ruh (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986),
431–43.
Ochsenbein, Peter. ‘Leidensmystik in dominikanischen Frauenklöstern des 14.
Jahrhunderts am Beispiel der Elsbeth von Oye’, in Religiöse Frauenbewegung
und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter, edited by Peter Dinzelbacher and
Dieter R. Bauer (Köln: Böhlau, 1988), 353–72.
Oliver, James H. ‘Disability in the Roman Military Lists’, Rheinishes Museum
(1957): 242–4.
Osgood, Josiah. ‘The Vox and Verba of an Emperor: Claudius, Seneca and le
Prince Ideal’, The Classical Journal 102 (2007): 329–53.
O’Sullivan, Timothy M. Walking in Roman Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
Padgett, Michael J. ‘The Stable hands of Dionysus: Satyrs and Donkeys as
Symbols of Social Marginalization in Attic Vase Painting’, in Not the Classical
Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, edited by Beith
Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 43–70.
Bibliography 299
Pahta, Päivi. ‘Vernacularisation of Scientific and Medical Writing in Its

Sociohistorical Context’, in Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval
English, edited by Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (Cambridge: Cambridge
Palmer, Richard. ‘In Bad Odour: Smell and its Significance in Medicine from
Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century’, in Medicine and the Five Senses,
edited by William F. Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2005 [1993]), 61–8.
Paolicchi, Luciano, ‘Introduzione’, in Gaius Valerius Catullus, I carmi, ed.
Luciano Paolicchi (Roma: Salerno Ed., 1998).
Park, Katharine. ‘Medicine and Natural Philosophy: Naturalistic Traditions’, in
The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, edited by
Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 88–92.
Parkin, Tim. ‘Life Cycle’, in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in
Antiquity, edited by Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence (Oxford: Berg
2010), 97–103.
Pegg, Mark Gregory. A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle
for Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Penella, Robert J. ‘Vires/Robus/Opes and Ferocia in Livy’s Account of Romulus
and Tullus Hostilius’, Classical Quarterly 40 (1990): 207–13.
Perfigli, Micol. Indigitamenta. Divinità funzionali e funzionalità divina nella
Religione romana (Pisa: ETS 2004).
Petersen, Hans. ‘Livy and Augustus’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American
Philological Association 91 (1961): 440–52.
Pfisterer-Haas, Susanne. ‘Die bronzenen Zwergentänzer’, in Das Wrack. Der
antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia, edited by Gisela Hellenkemper Salies with
Hans-Hoyer von Prittwitz und Gaffron and Gerhard Bauchhenß, I (Köln:
Rheinland Verlag, 1994), 483–504.
Philips, Kim M. Medieval Maidens. Young Women and Gender in England,
C.1270–c.1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).
Pigeaud, Jackie. La maladie de l’âme: étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans
la tradition médico-philosophique Antique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006).
Pinch, Adela. ‘Emotion and History. A review article’, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 37 (1995): 100–109.
Pincikowski, Scott E. Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von
Aue (London: Routledge, 2002).
Pitcher, L.V. ‘Characterization in Ancient Historiography’, in Blackwell Companion
to Greek and Roman Historiography, edited by John Marincola (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 102–17.
Poccetti, P. ‘Mefitis’, Annali del Seminario di Studi del Mondo Classico, Sezione
Linguistica 4 (1982): 237–60.
Pokhrel, Subhash. ‘Determinants of parental reports of children’s illnesses:

Empirical evidence from Nepal’, Social Science & Medicine 65 (2007):
1106–17.
Potter, T.W. and Calvin Wells. ‘A Republican Healing Sanctuary at Ponte di
Nona Near Rome and the Classical Tradition of Votive Medicine’, Journal of
the British Archaeological Association 138 (1985): 23–47.
Powell, J.G.F., Cicero: Cato Maior de Senectute (Cambridge: Cambridge

Prêtre, Clarisse and Philippe Charlier. Maladies humaines, thérapies divines:
analyse épigraphique et paléopathologique de textes de guérison grecs
(Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2009).
Priesching, Nicole. Maria von Mörl (1812–1868). Leben und Bedeutung einer
‘stigmatisierten Jungfrau’ aus Tirol im Kontext Ultramontaner Frömmigkeit
(Brixen: Weger, 2004).
Prioreschi, Plinio. A History of Medicine V, Medieval Medicine (Omaha: Horatius
Press, 2003).
Proctor, Caroline. ‘Between Medicine and Morals’, in Medieval Sexuality. A
Casebook, edited by April Harper and Caroline Proctor (London: Routledge,
2011), 113–31.
Prost, Francis and Jérôme Wilgaux, eds. Penser et représenter le corps dans
l’Antiquité (Rennes: PUR, 2006).
Proto, Fiorenza. ‘I vasi a paniere: la categoria P’, in Vasi in bronzo: Brocche,
askoi, vasi a paniere, edited by Suzanne Tassinari (Napoli: Electa Napoli,
2009), 94–140.
Purkis, William J. ‘Stigmata on the First Crusade’, in Signs, Wonders, Miracles:
Representation of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, edited by Kate Cooper
and Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), 99–108.
Purkis, William J. Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–
c.1187 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008).
Pyy, Elina. ‘Decus Italiae virgo: Virgil’s Camilla and the Formation of Romanitas’,
Arctos: Acta Philologica Fennica 44 (2010): 181–203.
Quasigroch, Günter. ‘Die Handprothesen des fränkischen Reichsritters Götz
von Berlichingen. 1. Fortsetzung: Die Ersthand’, Waffen und Kostümkunde
24 (1982): 17–33.
Quintana-Toledo, Elena. ‘Orality in the Middle English Medical Recipes of
G.U.L. Hunter 185’, in Textual Healing. Studies in Medieval English Medical,
Scientific and Technical Texts, edited by Javier E. Díaz Vera and Rosario
Caballero (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 153–75.
Radden, Jennifer, ed. The Nature of Melancholy: from Aristotle to Kristeva (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Bibliography 301
Ragg, Sascha. Ketzer und Recht: die weltliche Ketzergesetzgebung des Hoch-
mittelalters unter dem Einfluss des Römischen und Kanonischen Rechts
(Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2006).
Rainini, Ivan. Il Santuario de Mefite in Valle d’Ansanto. Archeologica 60 (Rome:
G. Bretschneider, 1985).
Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud:
Sutton Publishers, 1995).

Rawcliffe, Carole. Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer,
2006).
Reinach, Théodore. Mitridate Eupatore, Re del Ponto (Milano: Longanesi & Co.,
1960).
Renaud, J.G.N., and G. van der Mark. ‘Middeleeuwse Amersfoort. Enige
notities over zijn versterkingen en woonhuizen’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke
Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 6 (1959): 194–226.
Riddle, John. Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine (Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1985).
Riddle, John. ‘Manuscript Sources for Birth Control’, in Manuscript Sources of
Medieval Medicine: A Book of Essays, edited by Margaret Rose Schleissner
(New York: Garland, 1995), 145–55.
Rider, Catherine. Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford
Rider, Catherine. ‘Medical Magic and the Church in 13th-Century England’,
Social History of Medicine 24 (2011): 92–107.
Riha, Emilie. Römisches Toilettgerät und medizinische Instrumente aus Augst und
Kaiseraugst, Forschungen in Augst (Augst: Römermuseum 1986).
Riz, Anna Elisabeth. Bronzegefässe in der römisch-pompeianischen Wandmalerei
(Mainz am Rhein: von Zabern, 1990).
Roberts, Charlotte A. ‘Did they Take Sugar: the Use of Skeletal Evidence in the
Study of Disability in Past Populations’, in Madness, Disability and Social
Exclusion: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Difference, edited by Jane
Hubert (London: Routledge, 2010), 46–59.
Roche, Paul. ‘Pliny’s thanksgiving: an introduction to the Panegyricus’, in
Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World, edited by Paul Roche
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1–28.
Rogge, Sabine. ‘Tektonik und Ornamentik attischer Sarkophage’, in Grabeskunst
der römischen Kaiserzeit, edited by Guntram Koch (Mainz am Rhein: von
Zabern, 1993), 111–32.
Roller, Matthew B. ‘Exemplarity in the Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius
Cocles and Cloelia’, Classical Philology 99 (2004): 1–56.
Roller, Matthew B. ‘The Politics of Aristocratic Competition: Innovation in
Livy and Augustan Rome’, in Writing Politics in Imperial Rome, edited by
W.J. Dominik, J. Garthwaite and P.A. Roche (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 153–72.
Rose, Martha L. The Staff of Oidipus (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of
Michigan Press, 2003).
Rosenwein, Barbara. ‘Worrying about emotions in history’, American Historical
Review 107 (2002): 821–45.
Rosenwein, Barbara. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Rossum, A.J. van. ‘Fundatie der Lieve Vrouwen Broederschap te Amersfoort 1445’,
Archief voor de geschiedenis van het aartsbisdom Utrecht 8 (1880): 426–33.
Ruhberg, Christine. Der literarische Körper der Heiligen. Leben und Viten der
Christina von Stommeln (1242–1312) (Tübingen-Basel: Francke, 1995).
Ruth, Thomas DeCourseuy. ‘The Problem of Claudius’. PhD diss. Johns Hopkins
University, 1916.
Sackville, Lucy. Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century : The Textual
Representations (Woodbridge and Rochester: York Medieval Press, 2011).
Salisbury, Joyce E. ‘Gendered Sexuality’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality,
edited by Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland,
1996): 81–98.
Salonen, Kirsi and Jussi Hanska. Entering A Clerical Career at the Roman Curia
1458–1471 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013).
Samama, Évelyne. ‘A King Walking with Pain? On the textual and Iconographical
Images of Philip II and Other Wounded Kings’, in Disabilities in Roman
Antiquity: Disparate Bodies a capite ad calcem, edited by Christian Laes,
C.F. Goodey, and M. Lynn Rose (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 231–48.
Santillo Frizell, Barbro. ‘Curing the Flock. The Use of Healing Waters in Roman
Pastoral Economy’, in PECUS. Man and Animal in Antiquity. Proceedings
of the conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9–12, 2002. The
Swedish Institute in Rome, Projects and Seminars 1, edited by Barbro Santillo
Frizell (2004), 80–90.
Sarton, George. A History of Science, Vol. I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1959).
Scarborough, John. ‘The pharmacology of sacred plants, herbs, and roots’, in
Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, edited by Christopher
A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
138–74.
Schaff, Philip, ed. Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, St. Augustine’s City of God and
Christian Doctrine, Vol. 2 (London, New Edition. T. & T.Clark Ltd, 1980).
Schatzlein, Joanne and Daniel P. Sulmasy. ‘The Diagnosis of St. Francis: Evidence
for Leprosy’, Franciscan Studies 47 (1987): 181–217.
Schauenberg, Paul and Ferdinand Paris. Guide des plantes médicinales (Neuchâtel
and Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1974).
Bibliography 303
Scheid, John. ‘Sanctuaires et Thermes sous L’Empire’, Les Thermes Romains: Actes
de la table ronde organisée par l’École française de Rome (Rome: Collection de
l’École Française de Rome 142, 1991), 205–16.
Schilling, Robert. La religion romaine de Vénus depuis des origines jusqu’au temps
d’Auguste (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1954).
Schmidt, Martin. ‘Hephaistos lebt: Untersuchungen zur Frage der Behandlung
behinderter Kinder in der Antike’, Hephaistos 5–6 (1983–84): 133–61.

Schmucki, Octavian. The Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi: A Critical Investigation
in the Light of Thirteenth-Century Sources (St. Bonaventure, NY: The
Franciscan Institute, 1991).
Schmucki, Octavian. ‘Spiritualität, Askese und Krankheiten nach den Schriften
des Franziskus von Assisi’, in Franziskus von Assisi. Das Bild des Heiligen aus
neuer Sicht, edited by Dieter R. Bauer, Helmut Feld and Ulrich Köpf (Köln,
Weimar and Wien: Böhlau, 2005), 71–96.
Schuh, Barbara. ‘Jenseitigkeit in diesseitigen Formen’. Sozial- und mentalitäts-
geschichtliche Aspekte spätmittelalterlicher Mirakelberichte (Graz: Leykam,
1989).
Scribner, Robert W. ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the Disenchantment
of the World’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993): 475–94.
Segl, Peter. ‘Die Waldenser in Österreich um 1400: Lehren, Organisationsform,
Verbreitung und Bekämpfung’, in Friedrich Reiser und die ‘waldensisch-
hussitische Internationale’ im 15. Jahrhundert : Akten der Tagung Ötisheim-
Schönenberg, 2. bis 4. Oktober 2003, edited by Albert de Lange and Kathrin
Utz Tremp (Heidelberg: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2006), 161–88.
Senah, Kodjo A. ‘“Blofo Tshofa”: local perceptions of medicines in a Ghanaian
coastal community’, in Medicines: Meanings and Context, edited by Michael
L. Tan and Nina L. Etkin (Quezon City, Philippines: Health Action Inf.
Network, 1994), 83–101.
Seppänen, Liisa. ‘Rakentaminen ja kaupunkikuvan muutokset keskiajan Turussa.
Erityistarkastelussa Åbo Akademin päärakennuksen tontin arkeologinen
aineisto’. PhD diss. University of Turku, 2012.
Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs (London: Routledge, 2006).
Shatzmiller, Joseph. Médecine et justice en Provence medieval: Documents de
Manosque, 1262–1348 (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de
Provence, 1989).
Shorter, Edward. The Troubled History of Doctors and Patients (Harmondsworh:
Viking Penguin Books, 1986).
Shrewsbury, Lord. Les vierges stigmatisées du Tyrol (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon,
2007).
Sigal, Pierre-André. L’homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale (XIe – XIIe
siècle) (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1985).
Sigges, Bernard. ‘Vita cognita. Die Ausstattung pompejanischer Wohnhäuser

mit Gefäßen und Geräten untersucht an ausgewählten Beispielen’. PhD diss.
University of Cologne, 2000.
Signori, Gabriella. ‘The ‘Miracle Kitchen and its ingredients: a methodological
and critical approach to Marian shrine Wonders (10th to 13th century)’,
Hagiographica 3 (1996): 277–303.
Simons, Walter. ‘Reading a saint’s body: rapture and bodily movement in the
vitae of thirteenth-century beguines’, in Framing Medieval Bodies, edited
by Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1994), 10–23.
Simons, Walter and Joseph E. Ziegler. ‘Phenomenal religion in the thirteenth
century and its image: Elisabeth Spalbeek and the Passion cult’, in Women in
the Church, edited by W.J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1990), 117–26.
Singer, Julie. ‘Playing by Ear: Compensation, Reclamation, and Prosthesis in
Fourteenth-Century Song’, in Disability in the Middle Ages. Reconsiderations
and Reverberations, edited by Joshua R. Eyler (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2010), 39–52.
Siraisi, Nancy. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine. An Introduction to
Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, IL, and London: Chicago University
Press, 1990).
Sleiderink, Remco. ‘De dichters Jan Smeken en Johannes Pertcheval en de
devotie tot Onze Lieve Vrouw van de Zeven Weeën. Nieuwe gegevens uit de
rekeningen van de Brusselse broederschap (1499–1516)’, Queeste. Tijdschrift
voor middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden 19 (2012): 42–69.
Smoller, Laura A. ‘Defining Boundaries of the Natural in Fifteenth-Century
Brittany: The Inquest into the Miracles of Saint Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419)’,
Viator 28 (1997): 333–60.
Smoller, Laura A. ‘Miracle, Memory, and Meaning in the Canonization of
Vincent Ferrer, 1453–54’, Speculum 73 (1998): 429–54.
Snowden, Frank M. Blacks in Antiquity. Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman
Experience (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
Solodov, Joseph B. ‘Livy and the Story of Horatius, 1.24–26’, Transactions of the
American Philological Association 109 (1979): 251–68.
Sparkes, Brian. ‘Small World: Pygmies and Co.’, in Word and Image in Ancient
Greece, edited by N. Keith Rutter and Brian A. Sparkes (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 79–98.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
Staden, Heinrich von. ‘The mind and skin of Hercales: heroic diseases’, in
Maladie et maladies. Histoire et Conceptualisation, edited by Danielle
Gourevitch (Paris: Librairie Droz, 1992).
Bibliography 305
Stahl, Johannes. ‘Physically Deformed and Disabled People’, in The Oxford

Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, edited by Michael Peachin
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Stannard, Jerry. ‘The Herbal as a Medical Document’, Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 43 (1969): 212–20.
Šterbenc Erker, Darja. ‘Gender and Roman funerary ritual’, in Memory and
Mourning: Studies on Roman Death, edited by Valerie M. Hope and Janet

Huskinson (Oxford: Oxbow, 2011), 40–60.
Stiker, Henri-Jacques. Corps infirmes et sociétés. Essais d’anthropologie historique
(Paris: Dunod, 2005).
Stock, Markus. ‘Effekte des Authentischen? Selbstentwurf und Referenz in der
Autobiographie Johanns von Soest (1504/05)’, in Texttyp und Textproduktion
in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, edited by Elizabeth Andersen,
Manfred Eikelmann and Anne Simon (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 267–83.
Stoudt, Debra L. ‘The Medical, the Magical, and the Miraculous in the Healing
Arts of Hildegard of Bingen’, in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, edited
by Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoudt and George Ferzoco (Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2014).
Straus, Joseph N. Extraordinary Measures. Disability in Music (Oxford: Oxford
Suerbaum, Almut, and Manuele Gragnolati. ‘Medieval Culture “betwixt
and between”: An introduction’, in Aspects of the Performative in Medieval
Culture, edited by Almut Suerbaum and Manuele Gragnolati (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2010), 1–12.
Suhr, Elmer G. ‘A portrait of Claudius’, American Journal of Archaeology 59
(1955): 319–22.
Swain, Simon, ed. Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, Polemon’s Physiognomy
from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007).
Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939).
Syme, Ronald. ‘Livy and Augustus’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 64
(1959): 27–87.
Syme, Ronald. ‘Livio e Augusto’, in Tito Livio, Storia di Roma dalla sua
Fondazione (libri I–II) (Milan: Biblioteca universale Rizzoli, 1988), 5–85.
Van Synghel, G.A.M. Actum in camer scriptorum oppidi de Buscoducis: de
stedelijke secretarie van ’s-Hertogenbosch tot ca. 1450 (Hilversum: Verloren
b.v., uitgeverij, 2007).
Söderland, Martin. ‘Man and Animal in Antiquity: Votive Figures in Central
Italy from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC’, in PECUS. Man and Animal
in Antiquity. Proceedings of the conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome,
September 9–12, 2002. The Swedish Institute in Rome, Projects and Seminars
1, edited by Barbro Santillo Frizell (2004), 277–94.
Taavitsainen, Irma. ‘Early English Scientific Writing: New Corpora, New

Approaches’, in Textual Healing. Studies in Medieval English Medical,
Scientific and Technical Texts, edited by Javier E. Diaz Vera and Rosario
Caballero (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 177–206.
Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta. ‘Vernacularization of Medical Writing
in English: A Corpus–Based Study of Scholasticism’, Early Science and
Medicine 3 (1998): 157–85.

Tamminen, Miikka. ‘The Test of Friendship: Amicitia in the Crusade Ideology
of the Thirteenth Century’, in De Amicitia. Friendship and Social Networks
in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, edited by Katariina Mustakallio and
Christian Krötzl (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2010), 213–29.
Tamminen, Miikka. ‘Ad Crucesignatos et Crucesignandos. Crusade Preaching
and the Construction of the “True” Crusader in the 13th Century’. PhD diss.
University of Tampere, 2013.
Tan, Michael L. ‘The meaning of medicines: examples from the Philippines’, in
Medicines: Meanings and Context, edited by Michael L. Tan and Nina L. Etkin
(Quezon City, Philippines: Health Action Inf. Network, 1994), 69–81.
Tassinari, Suzanne. Il vasellame bronzeo di Pompei (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 1993).
Taylor, Michael Alan and Max Fink. Melancholia. The Diagnosis, Pathophysiology
and Treatment of Depressive Illness (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 2006).
Thalman, William G. ‘Greek Representations of the Slave Body: A Conflict of
Ideas?’, in Reading Ancient Slavery, edited by Richard Alston, Edith Hall and
Laura Proffitt (London: Bristol Classical Press 2011).
Tinsley, Ernest J. The Imitation of God in Christ: An Essay on the Biblical Basis of
Christian Spirituality (London: S.C.M. Press, 1960).
Toll, K. ‘Making Roman-ness in the Aeneid’, Classical Antiquity 16.1 (1997):
34–56.
Toohey, Peter. Melancholy, love, and time. Boundaries of the self in ancient
literature (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
Totelin, Laurence. ‘“Mithradates” Antidote – A Pharmacological Ghost’, Early
Science and Medicine 9.1 (2004): 1–19.
Touwaide, Alain. ‘Les poisons dans le monde antique et byzantin: introduction à
une analyse systémique’, Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie 38 (1991): 265–81.
Touwaide, Alain. ‘Byzantine Hospital Manuals (Iatrosophia) as a Source for the
Study of Therapeutics’, in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, edited
by Barbara Bowers (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007), 147–73.
Trentin, Lisa. ‘Exploring Visual Impairment in Ancient Rome’, in Disabilities in
Roman Antiquity: Disparate Bodies a capite ad calcem, edited by Christian
Laes, C.F. Goodey and M. Lynn Rose (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 89–114.
Trexler, Richard. ‘The Stigmatized Body of Francis of Assisi: Conceived,
Processed, Disappeared’, in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter. Politisch-soziale
Bibliography 307
Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, edited by Klaus

Schreiner and Marc Müntz (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002), 463–77.
Trio, Paul. ‘Middeleeuwse broederschappen in de Nederlanden. Een balans en
perspectieven voor verder onderzoek’, Trajecta 3 (1994): 97–109.
Trotter, David A. Medieval French Literature and the Crusades (1100–1300)
(Genève: Librairie Droz S.A., 1988).
Turner, Wendy J., ed. Madness in Medieval Law and Custom (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
Turner, Wendy J. Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled
in Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).
Turner, Wendy J. and Tory Vandeventer Pearman, eds. The Treatment of Disabled
Persons in Medieval Europe. Examining Disability in the Historical, Legal,
Literary, Medical, and Religious Discourses of the Middle Ages (Queenston,
ON: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010).
Utz Tremp, Kathrin. ‘Multum abhorrerem confiteri homini laico. Die Waldenser
zwischen Laienapostolat und Priestertum, insbesondere an der Wende
vom 14. zum 15. Jahrhundert’, in Pfaffen und Laien, ein mittelalterlicher
Antagonismus?: Freiburger Colloquium 1996 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag
Freiburg Schweiz, 1999), sivut 153–89.
Vaan, Michiel de. Etymological Dictionary of Latin and other Italic Languages
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008).
Valbruzzi, Francesca. ‘Un sarcofago di bambino rinvenuto ad Agrigento’, in
Grabeskunst der römischen Kaiserzeit, edited by Guntram Koch (Mainz am
Rhein: von Zabern, 1993), 155–8.
Van den Broeck, Gerard J. ‘Signs and signatures: Reading God’s Herbal’,
Semiotica 63 1–2 (1987): 109–28.
Van der Geest, Sjaak and Susan Reynolds Whyte. ‘The Charm of Medicines:
Metaphors and Metonyms’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 3.4 (1989):
345–67.
Van der Geest, Sjaak, Susan Reynolds Whyte and Anita Hardon. ‘The
Anthropology of Pharmaceuticals: A Biographical Approach’, Annual
Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 153–78.
Van Dussen, Michael. ‘Bohemia in English Religious Controversy before the
Henrician Reformation’, in Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice,
Vol. 7, edited by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Institute
of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2009), 42–60.
Van Dussen, Michael. From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication
in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Van Mulder, Jonas. ‘Lieve Jehan, goede vrient. Visioenen in het mirakelboek van
Halle’, Ons Geestelijk Erf: driemaandelijks tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van
de vroomheid in de Nederlanden 81 (2010): 311–38.
Vauchez, André. ‘Les stigmates de Saint François et leurs détracteurs dans les
derniers siècles du moyen âge’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 80
(1968): 595–625.
Vauchez, André. La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge.
D’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome:
Ecole Française de Rome, 1988).
Vauchez, André. Francis of Assisi: The life and afterlife of a medieval saint (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).
Veit, Raphaela. ‘Isaac Iudeaus’, in Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An
Encyclopedia, edited by Thomas F. Glick, Steven J. Livesey and Faith Wallis
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 275–6.
Velten, Hans Rudolf. ‘Grotesker und komischer Körper. Für ein performatives
Körperkonzept’, in Der komische Körper. Szenen – Figuren – Formen, edited
by Eva Erdmann (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2003), 145–53.
Ventura, Iolanda. ‘Un manuale di farmacologia medievale ed i suoi lettori’, in La
Scuola Medica Salernitana, Gli autori e i testi, edited by Danielle Jacquart and
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Firenze: Sismel Galluzzo, 2007), 465–534.
Vlahogiannis, Nicholas. ‘Disabling Bodies’, in Changing Bodies, Changing
Meanings. Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity, edited by Dominic
Montserrat (London: Routledge, 1998), 13–36.
Vlahogiannis, Nicholas. ‘Curing Disability’, in Health in Antiquity, edited by
Helen King (London: Routledge, 2005), 180–191.
Vons, Jacqueline. ‘Thériaque ou miracle? Les enjeux des miracles pour les habitants
de Tours aux Ve et VIe siècles’, Caesarodunum 35–6 (2001–02): 471–87.
Waardt, Hans de. Toverij en Samenleving. Holland 1500–1800 (Den Haag:
Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1991).
Wade, Susan. ‘Abbot Erluin’s Blindness: The Monastic Implications of Violent
Loss of Sight’, in Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval
Europe Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin
Christendom, edited by Katherine Allen Smith and Scott Wells (Leiden:
Brill, 2009), 205–22.
Walker, Daniel P. Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England
in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).
Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. Suetonius (London: Duckworth: 1982).
Walle, Etienne van de and Elisha P. Renne. Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs,
Practices, Interpretations (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Walsh, Patrick Gerard. ‘Livy’s Preface and the distortion of History’, The
American Journal of Philology 76 (1955): 369–83.
Walsh, Patrick Gerard. Livy: Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge:
Bibliography 309
Walter, Ewald. ‘Der historische Wert der ältesten nicht urkundlichen Quelle
zum Leben der hl. Hedwig und zur Gründung der Zisterzienserinnenabtei
Trebnitz aus der Feder des Caesarius von Heisterbach’, in Beiträge zur
Schlesischen Kirchengeschichte. Gedenkschrift für Kurt Engelbert, edited by
Bernhard Stasiewski (Cologne: Böhlau, 1969), 76–170.
Wappett, Matthew and Katarina Arndt, eds. Emerging Perspectives on Disability
Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Wappett, Matthew and Katarina Arndt, eds. Foundations of Disability Studies
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Warr, Cordelia. ‘Re-reading the relationship between devotional images, visions,
and the body: Clare of Montefalco and Margaret of Città di Castello’, Viator
38 (2007): 217–49.
Webb, Diana. ‘Friends or the Family: Some Miracles for Children by Italian
Friars’, in The Church and Childhood, edited by Diana Wood (Oxford and
Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 183–95.
Weech, Friedrich von. ‘Erasmus Schürstab’s Geschlechtsbuch. Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert’, 29. Jahresbericht
des historischen Vereins in Mittelfranken, Beilage 3 (1861): 39–77.
Weiler, Ingomar. ‘Hic audax subit ordo pumiliorum (Statius, Silvae, 1, 6,
57), Überlegungen zu Zwergen und Behinderten in der antiken Unter-
haltungskultur’, in Soziale Randgruppen und Aussenseiter im Altertum,
edited by Ingomar Weiler (Graz: Leykam, 1988), 121–45.
Weiler, Ingomar. ‘Inverted kalokagathia’, in Representing the Body of the Slave,
edited by Jane F. Gardner and Thomas J. Wiedemann (London: Routledge,
2002), 11–28.
Weiß, Otto. ‘Seherinnen und Stigmatisierte’, in Wunderbare Erscheinungen.
Frauen und katholische Frömmigkeit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by
Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schönigh, 1995),
54–70.
Wenzel, Horst. Die Autobiographie des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit.
Die Selbstdeutung des Stadtbürgertums (München: Fink, 1980).
Wesener, Franz-Wilhelm. Tagebuch über Anna Katharina Emmerick (Würzburg:
St Rita Verlag, 1926).
Wetzstein, Thomas. Heilige vor Gericht. Das Kanonisationserfahren im euro-
päischen Spätmittelaltern (Köln: Böhlau, 2004).
Wheatley, Edward. ‘Blindness, Discipline, and Reward: Louis IX and the
Foundation of the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts’, Disability Studies Quarterly
22 (2002), 194–212.
Wheatley, Edward. Stumbling Blocks before the Blind. Medieval Constructions of
a Disability (Michigan, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010).
White, Kenneth D. Farm Equipment of the Roman World (Cambridge:
Wilgaux, Jérôme. ‘Hugiês kai holoklaros. Le corps du prêtre en Grèce ancienne’,

in La norme en matière religieuse en Grèce ancienne, edited by Pierre Brulé
(Liège: Kernos, 2009), 231–42.
Wilson, Andrew. ‘Urination and defecation Roman style’, in Roman Toilets:
Their Archaeology and History, edited by Gemma C.M. Jansen, Ann Olga
Koloski-Ostrow and Eric M. Moormann (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 95–111.
Wittmer-Butsch, Maria and Constanze Rendtel. Miracula: Wunderheilungen

im Mittelalter Eine historisch-psychologische Annäherung (Cologne: Böhlau,
2003).
Woodman, A.J. Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (Oregon, OR: Croom Helm
1988).
Yarrow, Simon. ‘Narrative, audience and the Negotiation of Community in
Twelfth-century English Miracle Collections’, Studies in Church History 42
(2006): 65–77.
Yarrow, Simon. Saints and Their Communities. Miracle Stories in Twelfth-
Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Yegül, Fikret. Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (New York: MIT Press,
1992).
Yegül, Fikret. ‘The Thermo-Mineral Complex at Baiae and De Balneis
Puteolanis’, Art Bulletin 78/1 (1996): 137–61.
Yegül, Fikret. Bathing in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010).
Young, Jacqueline. ‘The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of
Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imagination’, in Looking Beyond,
Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, edited by Colum
Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, 2010), 203–41.
Zangenberg, Jürgen and Michael Labahn, eds. Christians as a Religious Minority
in a Multicultural City: Modes of Interaction and Identity Formation in Early
Imperial Rome (London: A&C Black, 2004).
Zanker, Paul and Björn Christian Ewald. Mit mythen leben. Die Bilderwelt der
römischen Sarkophage (Munich: Hirmer, 2004).
Zarri, Gabriella. Le sante vive. Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ‘400 e
‘500 (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990).
Zarri, Gabriella. ‘Lucia da Narni e il movimento femminile savonaroliano’, in
Girolamo Savonarola da Ferrara all’Europa, edited by Gigliola Fragnito and
Mario Miegge (Florence: SISMEL, 2001), 101–16.
Ziegler, Joseph. ‘Practitioners and Saints: Medical Men in Canonization
Processes in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine
(1997): 191–225.
Zimmerman, Susan. ‘Leprosy in the Medieval Imaginary’, Journal of Medieval &
Early Modern Studies 38/3 (2008): 559–87.
Bibliography 311
Zülch, Walter Karl. Johann Steinwert von Soest. Der Sänger und Arzt
(1448–1506) (Frankfurt am Main: Stempel, 1920).
Internet Pages
‘Disability History and the Ancient World’. Accessed June 25, 2014. http://
www.disability-ancientworld.com/bibliography/bibliography.htm
‘The ICD-10. Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders. Clinical
Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines, World Health Organisation’.
Accessed April 29, 2014. http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/blue
book.pdf
‘WHO | Disabilities’. Accessed at June 10, 2014. http://www.who.int/topics/
disabilities/en/

Index
ablutions 10–11, 201–2, 206–18 Baden 190, 198

Absalon of Roskilde, bishop 261 baldness, see hair, lack of
Achilles 206 Baldwin IV of Jerusalem 78
achondroplasia 29, 34 Baldwin, John 233
Aebelholt 261–4 banquets 35–8
Alexander IV, pope 119 Bath 113
Allison, Penelope 216 bathing, see also water
Amedick, Rita 202, 210 as a healing method 92, 259–60
American Psychiatric Association 86 sacred 209–10
Amersfoort 11, 242–53 as a secular activity 185–200,
amputation 57–62, 77, 150–51 208–9
Anderson, Benedict 253 sites of 10, 185–200
Andromachus the Elder 183 Bay of Naples 199
Anonymous of Passau 141, 142, 145 beauty 6, 30, 31, 40, 67–8, 75, 126
Antidotarium Nicolai 184, 225–6, 227–8, Beguines 127–9, 131, 133
232 Benfatti, Solanus 120, 133
Antonius Musa 188 Bernard Gui 150
Apollo 186–7, 191, 195 Bernard of Gordon 227
Apollo Grannus 190, 198 Bernold von Konstanz 104
apothecaries, see medicine, sellers of Bes and Ptah-Pataikoi 30
Appius Claudius 163 Biller, Peter 146, 149
Appius Claudius Caecus 19 Birgitta (or Bridget) of Sweden 135,
Apuleius 90, 93, 94 256–8
Aquae Helveticae 190, 198 Blacacius de Fayensa 72–3
Aristophilos of Platea 181 Black Death, see pestilence
Aristotle 32–3, 42 blasphemy 137, 245, 258–9
Arnaldus de Villa Nova 182–3 blindness 19, 53–4, 56, 69, 77, 78, 123,
Asclepius 33, 181, 186–7 132, 245, 257–8, 259
Augustine, saint 83–4, 146 Bolla, Margherita 213
Augustinian order 121, 127, 250, 261 Bollandists 243
Augustus, emperor 17, 21–2, 24–5, 153, Bologna 192, 205
161, 165–6, 188, see also Octavian Bonaventure 126
Aulus Gellius 88, 94 Bouflet, Joaquin 120
Avicenna 184, 227, 229 Brentano, Clemens 121
Brooke, Rosalind 120
bacchanalia 84 Brunel, Clovis 238
Bacchus 84, 186, 190 Bynum, Caroline Walker 119
Caligula 22 David of Augsburg 141

Canon Law 69, 231, 232–3, 260 Davidson, Arnold 120
canonization process 7, 69–70, 73, 75–8, Davis, Lennart J. 4, 51
81, 132, 134, 248, 252 De Ville, Jean-Baptiste 176
Catherine of Siena, saint 134, 175 deafness 3, 69, 72–4, 123, 257
Catherine of Vadstena, saint 258 death 9, 10, 60, 81, 92, 97–8, 100,
Cato 88, 160, 164 110–11, 178, 201–3, 206–9,

cerebral palsy 16 217–18, 239
Charcot, Jean-Marie 129 demons 38, 135, 245, 249, 251–3, 255–7
Charlemagne 111–12 depression 7, 83–100
Charles of Blois, Duke of Brittany, saint 76–7 Derrida, Jacques 177
charms 175–6 devil 251–2
chastity 234, 237 Dinzelbacher, Peter 133
children 40, 53, 72, 246, 248, 250, 259, 261 Dionysus 33–5, 37, 42, 84, 204–6,
accidents 53–4, 79, 247 210–11
dwarfs as 32–3, 38, 40–42 Dioscorides 173, 231–2
illnesses and infirmities of 95 disability 1–5, 7, 9–10, 15–18, 20, 23–5,
newborn 10, 201–6, 209 29–31, 42, 51–2, 60, 65, 72, 77–8,
reproduction of 11, 79, 259, see also 83, 249
fertility disfigurement 51, 55, 73–5, 78
Christina of Stommeln 128–9 doctors, see physicians
Cicero 19, 22, 23, 25, 85, 89 Domenico di Sora, saint 180
Cistercian order 127–9, 257, 262 Domenico Loricato, hermit 133
Clare of Montefalco, saint 127, 132, 135 Dominican order 107, 127–9, 132,
Claudius, emperor 15–18, 20–25 134–5
Cleisthenes 37 Domitian, emperor 17
clerics 68, 69, 75, 149–50, 151, 259–60 dropsy 88–9, 95, 99, 251
Cohen, Esther 124 drugs, see medicine
Cokayne, Karen 18, 25 dwarfism 6, 29–42, 63, 132
Columella 89–91, 94 Dymphna, saint 247
coma 90–91, 93–4
confraternities 11, 240, 253 ecstasy 122, 126, 133
Constable, Giles 119, 132 Ekkehard von Aura 104
Constantinus Africanus 228 Elisabeth Spalbeek 127–8, 131
contraception 236 Elsbeth van Oye 133–4
Corbeill, Anthony 209 Emmerick, Anne-Catherine 121
Cornelius Laco 24 Empedocles 175
Cornelius Nepos 160 Endres Imhoff 63–4
Craig, Leigh Ann 246 Endres Kreß 63
crusaders epilepsy 129, 132, 247, 259
martyrdom of 115–16 Eric of Denmark, saint 259
stigmata of 8, 103–17 Etruria 190, 192, 194–5
Eudes de Châteauroux 144
Dalarun, Jacques 120 Eugene IV, pope 148
Dauphine of Puimichel, saint 71, 74, 79–80 exclusion 15, 17, 19, 21–2
Index 315
family 5, 21, 24, 31, 34, 51–2, 52–7, 62–5, lack of 3, 18, 34, 35
68, 72–4, 156–7, 163–4, 172, 180, Hamburger, Jeffrey 134
201–9, 218, 229, 235, 237, 245–9 Hannibal 179
Farney, Gary D. 156 Harris, William 24
Farrell, Joseph 156, 166 Hartung, Edward Frederick 124
Fernández, Emilio Mitre 139 healing, see also medicine
fertility 11, 191, 196, 227, 232, 234, healers 181, 182, 234, 240, see also
236, see also infertility; children, physicians
reproduction of lack of 54
Finland 239–40 as a metaphor 132, 150–52, 161,
Finucane, Ronald 68, 75, 242 166
flagellation 8, 123–4, 131, 132–5 miraculous 55, 67–82, 123, 241–64,
Fons 194 see also pilgrimage; votive offerings;
foolishness 23, 92, see also mental disorder votum
Francesco Forgione, see Padre Pio of a nation 158–67
Francis of Assisi, saint 8, 106, 119–20, 124, physical 9–11, 185–200, 225–6,
125, 132, 136 227–8, 234
Franciscan order 75, 77, 106, 121, 126–7, spiritual 54, 132, 150–52
134–5, 141 Hedwig of Silesia, saint 125
Frederick II, emperor 184 Heinrich Suso 134
Frugoni, Chiara 120 Helen of Hungary, saint 135
Hercules 92, 186
Galba, emperor 16–17, 24–6 heresy 8–9, 137–52
Galeazzo II Visconti 77 Heribert Rosweyde 243
Galen 173, 176–8, 183–4, 227, 229, 236 hermaphrodites 16
Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia 80 Herodotus 37, 159
Gaufridus Budes 77 Hersch, Karen 218
Geest, Sjaak van der 182 Herzig, Tamar 135
Germanicus 21 Hesiod 153
Gertrude the Great, saint 135 Hiestand, Rudolf 68
Goodey, C.F. 3, 83 Hildegard of Bingen, saint 225–6, 229,
Gottfried von Berlichingen 57–65, 78 231–3, 239
graveyards 261 Hippocrates 33, 39, 180–81, 229, 235,
Green, Monica 234 236
Gregory IX, pope 108–9 Holy Spirit 131
Guibert of Nogent 105 homosexuality 3
Guibert of Tournai 106–7, 111, 114–15 Honorius III, pope 261
Götz the Iron Hand, see Gottfried von Horace 85, 96–9, 153, 155, 166
Berlichingen Hort, Arthur 181
hospitals 216, 236, 239, 259, 261
Hadrian 23 Hrabanus Maurus 137, 142
haemorrhages 123–4 Humbert de Romans 107, 111–12, 114
hair 36, 39, 41, 75 Hussites 138, 148–9, 152
facial 175 Hygieia 186
hairstyles 34 hysteria 129, 130
Ibn Sīnā, see Avicenna lethargy 83–5, 90–96, 98

Icelus Marcianus 24 Lex Oppia 164–5
Iliad 31 Liber de Simplici Medicina 225–7
Imbert-Gourbeyre, Antoine 120 Livy 9, 153–67
imitatio Christi, see suffering, as Louis IX of France, saint 71, 74, 79–80
Immonen, Teemu 141 love potions 176, 231
infants, see children, newborn Lucia Brocadelli (da Narni), saint 135
infertility 11, 79, 189, 230, 240, see also Lucian of Samosata 35–6
children, reproduction of; fertility Ludi Martialibus 21
Ingeborg, Princess of Denmark 232–3 Lukardis von Oberweimar 129–30
intercourse 127, 227, 233–4, see also sexuality Lynch, Katherine 248, 253
Isaac Iudaeus 228
magic 174–6, 218, 226, 230–31, 233,
Jacques of Vitry 109, 133 238–9
James of Voragine 127 Mahdia shipwreck 36
Jan de Waal 242–3 Malta 180
Jean of Bohemia 78 Margaret of Città di Castello, saint 132, 135
Johann I of Cleves 55 marginalization 6, 26, 68, 69–70, 72, 81
Johann von Soest 51, 53–5, 57, 62–5 Marie of France, queen 71
Johannes de la Garda 72 Marie of Oignies, Beguine 133
John Baptist 131 Matthaeus Plaetarius 225
John II, Marquis of Montferrat 77 Maurus Servius Honoratus 84
John XXIII, pope 143 medici, see physicians
Jordan, Gesine 78 medicine, see also healing
Jupiter 87, 96, 194, 199 animals as ingredients for 176–7, 225,
229, 231–2, 235
Karras, Ruth Mazo 224 antidotes 174–5, 182–3, 184
Katajala-Peltomaa, Sari 252 domestic 172–3, 201–2, 231
Kienzle, Beverly 141 dye of 175–6
Kleinberg, Aviad 129–30 Egyptian 173
knights 22, 57–61, 70–71, 78, 80–81, see herbal 91, 173–4, 177–8, 225, 229,
also nobility 231–2, 233–5, 239
Koopmans, Rachel 68, 80 metaphorical 161–4, 167
Köpf, Ulrich 120 preparation of 172, 174–5, 177–9
sellers of 178, 181, 226, 238
Laes, Christian 3, 74 ‘total drug effect’ of 171–4
Lago di Cadore 191 water as, see bathing; water
Lamballe 76–7 Mefitis 197–9
Laslett, Peter 249 Mehl, Andreas 156, 157–8, 165–6
Lateau, Louise 121–2 Menelaus 172–3
law, secular 3, 20, 34, 74, 162–4 menstruation 11, 228, 230, 234–6
Lazarus Imhoff 63–4 mental disorder 1–2, 3–5, 7, 16, 22, 32–3,
Leonard Mathioli of Foligno 126 74, 83–6, 92–100, 224, 246–7,
leprosy 78, 113, 125 256 see also demons; depression;
and heretics 8–9, 137–8, 142–7 foolishness
Index 317
Mesuè 184 Parkin, Tim 18, 26

Metzler, Irina 68 Paul, saint, apostle 107–8, 100, 120, 133,
Meyer, Paul 229 180, 183
Miccoli, Giovanni 120 pestilence 9, 79, 137–9, 145–50, 152, 182,
midwives 92, 205–6, 209, see also nurses 242–4, 258
milites, see knights Peter Martyr, saint 135
Minerva Medica 187, 189–90 Peter of Dacia 128

miracles, see healing; saints; pilgrimage Petrus de Pilichdorf 140, 147
missing limbs, see amputation Petrus Zwicker 139–52
Mithridate VI, king 179–80 Philip II Augustus, King of France 232–3
mobility impairments 32–3, 69, 72, 74, Philip III, King of France 71
123, 129–30, 248, 258–9, 260, see Philip of Clairvaux 127–8
also amputation; cerebral palsy; Philip Repingdon, Bishop of Lincoln 148
paralysis Philip the Upright 55–6
Mommsen, Theodor 179–80 Philippe le Chancelier 107, 109
Moore, R.I. 138–9, 142, 147–8 Philo of Tarsus 183–4
Musei Capitolini 204 physicians 39, 68, 71, 77, 87, 97, 121, 123,
Museo Nazionale Romano 210, 218 125, 139, 150–51, 167, 173–4, 176,
muteness 3, 69, 77, 123, 248, 260 180–84, 188–9, 197, 208, 213–15,
223, 225–7, 229, 232, 239–40, 247,
Naantali 225–6, 239 249, 251, 259–62, 264
Naber, Joseph 123 Pierre Thomas 127
Nagy, Piroska 131 Pietro Pomponazzi 127
nanos 29, 31–2 pilgrimage 53–7, 59–60, 71, 80, 196, 245,
Nero, emperor 17, 24, 26, 97, 183 246–7, 250, 252, 255, 261, see
Neumann, Therese 123 also healing, miraculous; votive
Nicholas of Tolentino, saint 79 offerings; votum
Nielsen, Inge 197, 199 Pitcher, L.V. 158
nobility 7, 67–82, 258 plague, see pestilence
nurses 202–4, 209, see also midwives Plautus 87–8, 89, 94–5
nymphs 93, 175, 189, 195, 196, 204 Pliny the Elder 90–91, 94, 179, 188–9, 191,
198, 228, 231–2
Octavian 19–20, 153, 161, 165, 166 see also Plutarch 17, 24, 181
Augustus Po River Valley 191–2, 199
Odysseus 174–5 poison 8–9, 137–51, 171, 175–9
Olav, saint 259–61 Pompeii 201–21
old age 5–6, 15–27, 86–9, 92–100 Pomponius Porphyrion 98
Osanna Andreasi (da Mantova), saint 135 possession 245, 247, 252–3, 256, see also
O’Sullivan, Tim 22 demons
preaching 8, 103–13, 116, 124, 138, 142,
Padgett, Michael J. 40 151–2
Padre Pio da Pietralcina (Francesco Preger, Wilhelm 141
Forgione), saint 122 priests 21–2, 80, 139, 144–5, 150, 234,
paralysis 123, 130–31, 188, 248, 259, 263 238, 240, 260, see also clerics
paraplegia, see paralysis De proprietatibus rerum 228
prostheses 61–2 Sigal, Pierre-André 242

Publius Servilius Priscus Structus 163 Silvanus 195
Pygmies 30, 40–41 slaves and slavery 17, 22–3, 25, 32, 36, 40,
Pyrrhus 179 105, 163, 179
snakes 146–7, 150, 176–8, 180, 213–14,
recipes 11, 182–4, 223–40 216–18, 256
restricted growth, see dwarfism Solanus Benfatti 120, 133

rex publica 19–20, 22 sorcery 233, see also magic
Ricardus de Insula 75 Statius 93
Richard III, King of England 16 Stefana Quinzani, Domenica Narducci
ridicule 6, 21–3, 35, 39–41 (da Paradiso), saint 135
Robert of Naples, king 71, 79 Šterbenc Erker, Darja 209
Roger of Salisbury, Bishop of Bath and sterility, see fertility
Wells 113 strength 5–6, 18, 27, 60, 97, 109–11, 154,
Rose, Martha Lynn 3, 30 164–5, 167, 171–2, 174, 179
Rosenwein, Barbara 250 Suetonius 17–25
Rosweyde, Heribert 243 suffering
Ruhberg, Christine 129 as imitatio Christi 8, 103–36
physiological 4, 51, 58, 60–61, 63–4,
Sackville, Lucy 139, 141–3 65, 92, 94–5, 229, 231, 247, 251
St.-Denis 80 suicide 86, 94, 179, 259
saints Sulmasy, Daniel P. 125
miracles of, see healing, miraculous; support received by the infirm 11, 59, 62–5,
pilgrimage 71–2, 77, 247–50
as physicians 259–60
punishments by 258–9 Tassinari, Suzanne 212–15
as stigmatics 8, 119–36 taverns 216, 248
in visions 275–6 Terence 92
Salerno 184, 225, 226–9, 232, 261 Thalman, William G. 40
Sancha of Majorca, Queen consort of Theobaldus de Beloczac, miles 76–8
Naples 71, 79 Thomas Arundel 143
sarcophagi 201–13, 217–19 Thomas Becket, saint 73–4, 80
Sarton, George 181 Thomas Ebendorfer 148–9
Satyrions 35–6 Thomas of Celano 125–6
Scarborough, John 181 Thucydides 159
Schatzlein, Joanne 125 Tiberius, emperor 21–2
Schmucki, Octavian 120, 124 Tiberius Gemellus 22
Seneca 17, 85, 90, 94, 96, 98–9, 157 Timaeus of Tauromenium 38
sermons, see preaching Titus Lucretius Carus 85
serpents, see snakes Titus Vinius 24
Servius 88, 95, 96, 175 Tommaso Boni da Foligno 132
sexuality Tommaso di Antonio da Siena, named
disorders 11, 86, 92, 223–40 Caffarini 134–5
and leprosy 142 Tommaso Garbo 126
shame 7, 68–9, 72–6, 81 Trajan 19, 23
Index 319
Trexler, Richard 124, 132–3 crusades as 109–10, 112–13

Trondheim 259–60 injuries 57–62, 68, 76–8, 107–11,
Trotula 183, 232, 235 197
Ward, Benedicta 242
unconsciousness 60, 93–4, see also coma water, see also bathing
Urban II, pope 104 healing powers of 10–11, 92–3,
Urban V, pope, saint 77, 79 185–200, 208–9, 228, 261–2

as sacred 185, 187–9, 196
Vado Mortale (Death Valley) 198 Wesener, Franz-Wilhelm 121
Vauchez, André 120 Wheatley, Edward 9
Venturino da Bergamo 134 Whyte, Suzan 182
Venus 84, 175–6, 186, 199 Wilhelm of Aebelholt, saint 261–4
Vespasian 23–4 World Health Organization 2
Vestal Virgins 187–8
Via Appia 179 Xenophon 35
Virgil 95–7, 153, 166, 198
Virgin Mary 11, 130–31, 245 Yarrow, Simon 245
Vitruvius 189 Yëgul, Fikret 199
Vopiscus 212 Young, Jacqueline 131
votive offerings 10, 33, 54, 185–200 youth 24–7, 54, 182–3
votum 71, 77, 80, 246–9, 251, 255, 261
Zemon Davis, Natalie 242
Walter of Strasbourg 135
war 17, 80–81, 153, 154–5, 159–61, 163–7 Øm 262

Christian Krötzl - Katariina Mustakallio - Infirmity in Antiquity and The Middle Ages - Social and Cultural Approaches To Health, Weakness and Care-Routledge (2015)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Christian Krötzl - Katariina Mustakallio - Infirmity in Antiquity and The Middle Ages - Social and Cultural Approaches To Health, Weakness and Care-Routledge (2015)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:35 21 January 2017

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:35 21 January 2017

This page has been left blank intentionally

Health, Weakness and Care

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

List of Figures and Tables vii

Introduction: Infirmitas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1

PART I Defining Infirmity and Disability

1 Age, Agency and Disability: Suetonius and the Emperors of the

2 Infirmitas or Not? Short-statured Persons in Ancient Greece 29

3 Performing Dis/ability? Constructions of ‘Infirmity’ in Late

4 Nobility, Community and Physical Impairment in Later

5 Towards a Glossary of Depression and Psychological Distress in

PART II Societal and Cultural Infirmitas

6 The Crusader’s Stigmata: True Crusading and the Wounds of

7 Illness, Self-inflicted Body Pain and Supernatural Stigmata:

8 Imagery of Disease, Poison and Healing in the Late Fourteenth-

9 Infirmitas Romana and its Cure – Livy’s History Therapy in the

PART III Infirmity, Healing and Community

10 From Mithridatium to Potio Sancti Pauli: The Idea of a Medicine

11 Alternative Medicine in Pre-Roman and Republican Italy:

12 Bathing the Infirm: Water Basins in Roman Iconography and

13 Sexual Incapacity in Medieval Materia Medica223

14 Miracles and the Body Social: Infirmi in the Middle Dutch

15 Saints, Healing and Communities in the Later Middle Ages:

2.1 Oinochoe, New York, MMA, Niobid Painter.

12.1 First bath and death scenes in the Torlonia sarcophagus,

Il vasellame bronzeo di Pompei, II, 205 (inv. 3641), 215

1.1 Age divisions from Antiquity 27

12.1 Life-cycle sarcophagi with depictions of basins 219

Ria Berg is a classical archaeologist and philologist specializing in Pompeian

Véronique Dasen is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of

Alison Griffith is Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in Christ-

Mary Harlow is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the School of Archaeology

Svetlana Hautala graduated in cultural anthropology and classical languages

thesis on selling drugs in marketplaces in Antiquity titled ‘Pharmakopwlai:

Gábor Klaniczay is Professor of Medieval Studies at the Central European

University, Budapest. His interests are in the historical anthropology of medieval

Christian Krötzl is Professor of Medieval History at the University of

Ray Laurence is Professor of Roman History and Archaeology at the University

Katariina Mustakallio is Senior Lecturer of History and Dean of the School of

Susanna Niiranen received her PhD at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland),

University of Oxford, where she investigates Catharina Jagellonica within the

Donatella Puliga studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (founded

Elina Pyy conducted her doctoral studies in the University of Helsinki,

Miikka Tamminen received his PhD at the University of Tampere in 2013

Reima Välimäki graduated with his MA in General History from University of

in the Low Countries.

Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio and Jenni Kuuliala

This page has been left blank intentionally

Jenni Kuuliala, Katariina Mustakallio and Christian Krötzl

encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction

permanent impairments, as well as the causality that bodily difference inevitably

broader societal and religious meanings. Our intention is to examine deficiency

insights into the on-going attempts to understand what kinds of differentiating

First we will approach infirmity as a fluid, differentiating category, examining

discussed in the chapter by Katariina Mustakallio and Elina Pyy. Analysing

Healing Methods and Social Sphere

Svetlana Hautala’s chapter considers how a drug as a healing method can

This page has been left blank intentionally

List of Figures and Tables vii

Introduction: Infirmitas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1

2 Infirmitas or Not? Short-statured Persons in Ancient Greece 29

13 Sexual Incapacity in Medieval Materia Medica223

1.1 Age divisions from Antiquity 27

12.1 Life-cycle sarcophagi with depictions of basins 219