IMC 2013: Sessions

This session explores perceptions of the healing powers of Saint Thomas Becket, whose cult flourished in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with particular regard to mental illness and leprosy. Claire Trenery examines the depiction of mental illness in the twelfth-century miracles of Thomas Becket, focusing on the relationship between sin and mental illness, and the physical and spiritual implications of conditions like epilepsy and insanity. Becket's associations with a bodily affliction, leprosy, are considered by Rachel Koopmans and Elma Brenner. Koopmans discusses the iconographic representation of miracle tales involving leprosy in the stained glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral. Examining archival documents, letters and leprosarium dedications in Normandy, Brenner questions whether Becket's connection to leprosy related to healing, or rather to lepers' special religious status and the notion that they themselves were martyrs.