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IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 1319: Body, Soul, and Otherness, II: Religious and Medical Definitions of Mental and Physical Difference

Wednesday 5 July 2017, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:'The Body in the City' Consortium & Trivium, Tampere Centre for Classical, Medieval & Early Modern Studies, University of Tampere
Organiser:Jenni Kuuliala, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Moderator/Chair:Gordon Whyte, School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies, Monash University, Victoria
Paper 1319-aDemonic Possession and the Physical, Spiritual, and Social 'Other'
(Language: English)
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Index terms: Hagiography, Lay Piety, Medicine, Mentalities
Paper 1319-bEffacing Demons: Ritual and Medical Care in Medieval Drama
(Language: English)
Andreea-Dana Marculescu, Universiteit Utrecht
Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Lay Piety, Medicine, Mentalities
Paper 1319-cSainthood, Physical Deviance, and Otherness in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Jenni Kuuliala, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Index terms: Hagiography, Lay Piety, Medicine, Social History
Abstract

Religion and medicine were in many ways intertwined in the Middle Ages, both in explaining deviance, illness, and impairment as well as in the healing practices. Religion and medicine also offered methods, which sometimes overlapped and sometimes contradicted each other, for cure and for ways to integrate deviant people back into a community. This session analyses healing as a cultural practice; the focal questions are how religious and medical explanations intermingled in the construction of 'the Other', and in what ways they complemented or competed in explaining, categorising, and treating different mental and bodily conditions.