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IMC 2003: Sessions

Session 124: Medieval Devotional Practice and Medicine

Monday 14 July 2003, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:MEDICA: A Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages
Organiser:Louise M. Bishop, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
Moderator/Chair:Bryon Grigsby, Department of English & Communications, Centenary College, New Jersey
Paper 124-aCelebrating the Female Healer: The Virgin Mary as Nurse to Christus Medicus
(Language: English)
Carole Rawcliffe, School of History, University of East Anglia
Index terms: Medicine, Theology
Paper 124-bMedicina Sacramentalis
(Language: English)
Peregrine Horden, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London
Index terms: Medicine, Theology
Paper 124-cResting in Pieces: The Practice of Bodily Division in England c. 1300
(Language: English)
Danielle Marianne Westerhof, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
Index terms: Mentalities, Social History
Paper 124-d'And you shall be whole': Vernacular Medical Reading and Cure
(Language: English)
Louise M. Bishop, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Literacy and Orality, Medicine, Theology
Abstract

This session will address the complex intersection, visible in late medieval healing practices and imagery, between Christian piety and medicine. With attention to the telling interplay among theological, literary, and pictorial renderings of sickness and health, speakers will consider medical practices within a context of religious ideas about illness, cure, and piety. Papers will explore the figure of Christus Medicus and the Virgin as nurse, as well as the healing power of the Host and the curative aspects of reading itself, to interpret a wide range of practices associated with healing and piety in the late Middle Ages.