History of Spiritual Care

in Nursing
 Pre Christian Era
• Nursing in Pre-Christian times,
religious beliefs had great bearing on
the attitude towards the sick and the
mode of caring for the sick and the
suffering.

• Christianity believed that one should

render services of love to humanity
without any reward. It was equal to
one's sincere love of God. This
principle was absorbed in nursing and
helped to improve the status of a
nurse.
 Pre Christian Era
• Babylonia
• “Code of Hammurabi” is an important
law code made in Mesopotamia
during the reign of the Babylonians.

• This code was special because it was

the first law code that included laws
to deal with everyone in the current
society.
 Pre Christian Era
China
Early Buddhist discovered in China the
curative value of many plants led to
nursing therapeutics employing herbology.

India
Perfected the art of handwashing and
included a role for the male nurse
 Pre Christian Era
Ireland
Ancient druidic priests and priestess
advised on care and healing in illness.

Egypt
Egyptian medicine contained a strong element
of religious magic in its origin.
Perfected the art of embalming
Produced the first physician – Imhotep
Produced medical textbook – Ebers Papyrus
Instinctive nursing care existed at this time
 Pre Christian Era
Greece
Nursing care in the Greco-Roman era was largely the
responsibility of members of the patient’s own family or
slaves
Ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates who instructed
caregivers to “use their eyes and ears, and to reason
from facts rather than from assumptions

Hippocrates taught that “fluid diet only should be given in fevers”; “cold sponging
for high temperatures”; and “hot gargles for acute tonsillitis.
Greek religious mythology introduced the concept of women’s involvement in the
healing arts: Aesculapius as the God of Healing; Hygeia as the Goddess of
Health; Panacea as the Restorer of Health
 Pre Christian Era
Rome
Natural or folk remedies was used in the
care of the sick in Roman households
Roman Elder, Cato, found the treatment
and care of gout, colic, indigestion,
constipation, and pain in the side
Roman Gods were offered libations in
petition for favors related to health and
illness needs
 Early Christian Era
Veronica of Jerusalem

• One of the first recorded acts of

nursing heroism and courage

• Present during Christ’s painful journey

to Calvary and cleansed the bleeding
face of Jesus with her veil

• Often cited as a model for nurses

 Early Christian Era
Deacons & Deaconesses
• Among the first “titled” followers of
Jesus for whom care of the sick and
infirm was identified
• Jesus exhorted to give a “cup of cold
water” in His name so these early
disciples of Christianity opened their
homes to those in need of physical
and emotional care
• One of the first recorded acts of
nursing heroism and courage
 Early Christian Era
Roman Matrons
• Women who converted to Christianity
and used their power and wealth to
support charitable work of nursing the
sick
• The matrons founded hospitals and
convents, living ascetic lives dedicated
to the care of the ill and infirm
• Roman matrons were St. Helena,
Paula and Marcella
 Early Christian Era
Roman Matrons: St. Helena
Flavia Helena started the first “gerokomion” or
home for the aged infirm in the Roman Empire

Roman Matrons: St. Paula

• founded the first hospice for pilgrims in
Bethlehem.
• She managed the institutions and personally
nursed the tired and the sick for almost 20
years.
 Early Christian Era
Roman Matrons: St. Marcella
Founded a community of religious women
whose primary concern was care of the
sick poor.
Devoted her life to charitable works and
prayer.
 Early Monastic Nurses
St. Ragunde
Founded the Holy Cross Monastery. Established a
hospice and cared lovingly and tenderly those
afflicted with leprosy

St. Hilda
A cultured and scholarly woman, directed her
monastic community in the care of the sick
including the lepers

St. Brigid
Founded the great monastery of Kildare, where the
ill were received with charity and compassion
 Medieval Monastic Nursing
Hildegard of Bingen
Learned a great deal on illness and healing during
internship of nursing in Disibodenberg infirmary.

St. Francis of Assisi

Considered the patron of those who tend the sick.
Gave words of sympathy when he could not give
words of hope.

St. Clare of Assisi

St. Francis would be sending the diseased and
deformed to St. Clare and her nuns who nursed
them in little huts of mud and branches.
 Medieval Monastic Nursing
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
A princess of Thuringia who, after her husband’s
death in the Crusades, entered the Third Order of
St. Francis and committed her life to the care of the
sick poor.

St. Catherine of Siena

Known to contemporary healthcare providers as
the “Patroness of Nursing,” entered the Tertiaries of
St. Dominic while still in her teens
During the Black Plague epidemic in 1372, she
walked night and day in the wards, only resting for
a few hours and then in an adjacent house
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
Daughters of Charity of
St. Vincent de Paul
Vincent de Paul became concerned about the lack of
care for the poor and needy especially the sick poor
in 17th century France
He began gathering together a band of laity to visit
and care for the sick and the poor, naming them the
Confraternity of Charity
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
Louise de Marillac
a wealthy widow, was directed by Vincent to become
the first leader of the small community.

Sisters of Charity
The American Sisters of Charity followers of the
vision of St. Vincent de Paul was founded by
Elizabeth Bayley Seton, an Episcopalian, who
served the poor first with the Protestant Sisters of
Charity then later converted to Catholicism.
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
Sisters of Mercy
• Catherine McAuley, established a building of
classrooms, dormitories, a clinic, and a chapel
labeling it the “House of Mercy”
• Mother Catherine obtained permission to visit the
wards of several Dublin hospitals with her nuns to
bring consolation to the patients
• The Sisters of Mercy were sent to the Crimea by
the English government and labored with
Florence Nightingale
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
Kaiserswerth Deaconesses
• Protestant community of women with a primary
ministry of nursing the sick was founded by a
young Lutheran Minister, Theodore Fleidner
• Together with his wife, Frederika Munster, they
gathered a group of women who would visit and
nurse the sick poor in their homes
• The four key branches of their work were
described as: nursing, relief of the poor, care of
children; and work among unfortunate women.
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
Kaiserswerth Deaconesses
• The role of the contemporary
Lutheran deaconess is to “serve
God’s people through spiritual care
and works of mercy.’
• Their ministry centers on the concepts
of “agape love and love of neighbor”
as well as a sense of “mercifulness
and community”
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
Nightingale Nurses
Florence Nightingale’s community is not
considered a religious “order”
Nightingale was one of the first to bring
spirituality and science together to improve the
care of the sick
Central to Nightingale’s spirituality was her belief
in the greatness of God, as the “Spirit of Truth”
 Post Reformation Nursing: The
Catholic and Protestant Nursing
Orders
World War I Nurses: Edith Cavell
• Edith Cavell was one of the greatest nursing heroines
during the first world war who moved to Brussels,
Belgium in order to become director of a new school of
nursing.
• She began to cooperate with underground efforts to try
and save the lives of wounded Allied soldiers whom
the occupation forces planned to either kill or imprison.
• Edith Cavell’s last recorded words before her death
were contained in this assertion: “I have nothing to
regret. If I had to do it over again, I would do just as
I did.”
 For as Florence Nightingale
asserted so many years ago,
“God’s precious gift of life is often
placed literally” in the nurse’s
hands.

This is spirituality in nursing;

this is standing on holy
ground.