This book explores how madness was defined and diagnosed as a condition of the mind in the Middle Ages and what effects it was thought to have on the bodies, minds and souls of sufferers. Madness is examined through narratives of miraculous punishment and healing that were recorded at the shrines of saints. This study focuses on the twelfth century, which has been identified as a ‘Medieval Renaissance’: a time of cultural and intellectual change that saw, among other things, the circulation of new medical treatises that brought with them a wealth of new ideas about illness and health. With the expanding authority of the Roman Church and the tightening of papal control over canonisation procedures in this period, historians have claimed that there was a ‘rationalisation’ of the miraculous. In miracle records, illnesses were explained using newly-accessible humoral theories rather than attributed to divine and demonic forces, as they had been previously. The first book-length study of madness in medieval religion and medicine to be published since 1992, this book challenges these claims and reveals something of the limitations of the so-called ‘medicalisation’ of the miraculous. Throughout the twelfth century, demons continue to lurk in miracle records relating to one condition in particular: madness. Five case studies of miracle collections compiled between 1070 and 1220 reveal that hagiographical representations of madness were heavily influenced by the individual circumstances of their recording and yet were shaped as much by hagiographical patterns that had been developing throughout the twelfth century as they were by new medical and theological standards.
...MoreReview Stephen Gordon (2019) Review of "Madness, Medicine and Miracle in Twelfth-Century England". Social History of Medicine (pp. 872-873).
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Madness, Medicine and Miracle in Twelfth-Century England
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Arnaud, Sabine M.;
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Anne E Bailey;
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The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives
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Making Miracles in Medieval England
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Demonology, Neurology, and Medicine in Edwardian Britain
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Pomata, Gianna;
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Early Franciscans in England: Sickness, Healing and Salvation
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Inventing Diagnosis: Theophilus' De urinis in the Classroom
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Wee, John Zhu-En;
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The Practice of Diagnosis in Mesopotamian Medicine: With Editions of Commentaries on the Diagnostic Series Sa-gig
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Ibn Baklarish, Yusuf ibn Ishaq;
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Rebecca Lampert Golding;
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Visualizing Medicine in the Twelfth Century: Bodily Disease, Spiritual Cure, and Christian Salvation
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Ernesto Riva;
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Il difficile cammino della materia medica presso i monaci dell’alto medioevo
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van der Lugt, Maaike;
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The Learned Physician as a Charismatic Healer: Urso of Salerno (Flourished End of Twelfth Century) on Incantations in Medicine, Magic, and Religion
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The Medical Diagnosis of Demonic Possession in an Early Modern English Community
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