IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 816: The Poor as Well as the Rich: Lay Religious and Their Care for the Sick, the Dying, and the Dead
Tuesday 6 July 2021, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews |
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| Organiser: | Abigail J. Hartman, St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews |
| Moderator/Chair: | Lola Digard, Capaciteitsgroep Geschiedenis Universiteit van Amsterdam |
| Paper 816-a | Between Poverty and the Plague: Understanding Cellites and Their Works of Mercy in the Later Middle Ages (Language: English) Index terms: Lay Piety, Medicine, Religious Life, Social History |
| Paper 816-b | Where Have All the Bodies Gone: Cellites and Plague Burials in 15th-Century Netherlandish Towns (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - General, Local History, Medicine, Social History |
| Paper 816-c | Cellites' Plague and Mental Hospitals in the 16th-Century Netherlands (Language: English) Index terms: Architecture - General, Medicine, Social History |
| Abstract | Scholarship on lay religious communities has neglected the 'Cellites', groups of devout laypeople who, from the 14th century, took on care for the sick, dying, and dead. This session offers a corrective, examining Cellite houses in the Netherlands and Germany at the interstices of urban health management and lay devotion. One paper probes the reasons for their distinctive charity from the perspective of trends in lay devotion, focusing on German-speaking territories, while the others deal with two aspects of Cellite healthcare in the Netherlands: first, the problems inherent in how and where to bury plague dead; second, the medicalisation of the Cellites' treatment of the mentally ill and to what extent these practices were absorbed by post-Reformation poor relief institutions. |