Healing Body and Soul in Early Medieval Europe: Medical Remedies with Christian Elements

Abstract

The early medieval period has been traditionally cast as the nadir of medicine in the West. Such an image stemmed in part from the negative perceptions of ‘superstitious’ charms and incantations, in which medicine was seen to be detrimentally affected by Christian and pagan influences alike. This outdated view has been revised substantially, and the intersections between medicine and religion are now understood to reflect a complex, multivalent approach to healing. However, this re-evaluation of early medieval medicine, and especially of recipe literature, has concentrated primarily on Old English material. As a result, the substantial corpus of early medieval Latin continental recipes found outside the established canon of classical and late antique texts has largely been overlooked. This article seeks to redress this imbalance, offering the first systematic investigation into the ways in which Christian elements appear in these comparatively understudied pharmaceutical writings. The article's findings have significant implications for our understanding of Latin recipe literature and of the evolution of medical knowledge in early medieval Europe.