Abstract
This paper sets out how men and women in the age of Bishop Grosseteste would have explained health and disease. It will address three main points: firstly, how the Church defined good health, and what wider impact this had on institutions caring for the sick. Second, to what extent ‘religious’ explanations of sickness and disease sat alongside so-called ‘medical’, or ‘scientific’, understanding of healthy living. Here, particular emphasis will be placed on genre of self-help guides to health called the regimen sanitatis (regimen of health). Having thus established the importance and interconnected nature of sin and sickness, the final part of the paper will examine briefly the impact that medical authorities had on wider spiritual concepts of health and disease, focusing in particular on homiletic literature, such as the handbook for preachers, Fasisculus morum.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
My emphasis.
- 3.
For the therapeutic regime (see Bonfield 2013).
- 4.
For the translation and transmission process (see Lindberg1992).
- 5.
For an introduction (see Jouanna 2001).
- 6.
Robert Grosseteste, who took a keen interest in such medical writers, is known to have referred to the Canon (Crombie1971).
- 7.
For an examination of medicine in the Graeco-Roman World (see Jouanna 2012).
- 8.
For example, see Paynell (1528).
- 9.
According to the ‘Ashmole Version’ of the Secreta John translated the text from the Greek (which no longer survives), into Syriac and ‘fro Þat into Arrabike’: Mahmoud Manzalaoui (1977). Secretum secretorum: Nine English Versions, 29 and ix–xiv. EETS, 226. Oxford: OUP.
- 10.
It is assumed that the text was translated at some point between 1135 and 1150: Melitta W. Adamson (1995). Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in Regimen Sanitatis Literature from 800 to 1400, 51. New York: Peter Lang.
References
Adamson, M. W. (1995). Medieval dietetics: Food and drink in Regimen Sanitatis literature from 800 to 1400. New York: Peter Lang.
Aquinas, T. (1982). Theological texts (T. Gilby, Trans.). Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press.
Arbesmann, R. (1954). The concept of ‘Christus medicus’. in St. Augustine. Traditio, 10, 1–28.
Aristotle (Pseudo). (1528, 1970 ed.). Secreta Secretorum (R. Copland, Trans.). Amsterdam: De Capo Press.
Augustine of Hippo. (1972). Concerning the City of God against the Pagans (H. Bettenson, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Bell, R. (1999). How to do it: Guides to good living for Renaissance Italians. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bonfield, C. (2006). The Regimen sanitatis and its dissemination in England, c. 1348–1550. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia.
Bonfield, C. (2013). Therapeutic regimes for bodily health in medieval english hospitals. In L. Abreu & S. Sheard (Eds.), Hospital life: Theory and practice from the medieval to the modern (pp. 21–48). Oxford: Peter Lang.
Bowers, R. (1975). Choral Institutions within the English Church: Their constitution and development, 1340–1500. Unpublished PhD Thesis, UEA.
Brown, P. (1988). The body and society: Men, women and sexual renunciation in early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Carlin, M. (1989). Medieval english hospitals. In L. Granshaw & R. Porter (Eds.), The hospital in history (pp. 21–39). London: Routledge.
Crombie, A. (1971). Robert Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science, 1100–1700. Oxford: Clarendon.
Dugdale, W. (1817–1830). Monasticon anglicanum (J. Calley, H. Ellis, & B. Bandiel, Eds., 6 vols). London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown & Alexander H. Thompson.
Ell, S. R. (1981). The two medicines. Janus, 68, 15–23.
Fulbert of Chatres. (1865). Hymnus seu prosa de sancto Pantaleon (Hymn to St Panaleon). In Patrologiae latinae cursus completes (vol. CXII, col. 341). (J. P. Migne, Ed.). Paris: Garnier Frates.
García y García, A. (Ed.). (1981). Constitutiones Concilii quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis glossatorum. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
García-Ballester, L. (2002). Galen and Galenism: Theory and medical practice from antiquity to the European renaissance (J. Arrizabalaga, C. L. Cifuentes, F. Salmon, Eds.). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Getz, F. (1998). Medicine in the english Middle ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gil-Sotres, P. (1998). The regimens of health. In M. D. Grmek, B. Fantini, & A. Shugaar (Eds.), Western medical thought from antiquity to the Middle ages (pp. 291–318). London: Harvard University Press.
Grignaschi, M. (1982). Remarques sur la formation et l’interprétation du Sirr Al-Asrar. In W. F. Ryan & C. B. Schmitt (Eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle, The Secret of Secrets: Sources and influences. London: Warburg Institute Studies.
Grosseteste, R. (1861, reprint 2012). Roberti Grosseteste Episcopi Quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae (H. R. Luard, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grosseteste, R. (1984). Templum Dei (J. Goering, Mantello, & A. C. Frank, Ed.). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
Grosseteste, R. (2010). The letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (F. A. C. Mantello & J. Goering, Trans.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Gruner, O. C. (1930). A treatise on the Canon of medicine of Avicenna incorporating a translation of the first book. London: Luzar & Co.
Hardingham, G. (1985). The Regimen Sanitatis in late medieval England. Unpublished DPhil. Thesis: University of London.
Harrison, P. (2007). The fall of man and the foundations of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hippocrates. (1931). Nature of man. Regimen of health. Humours. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams (vol. IV, W. H. S. Jones, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holton-Krayenbuhl, A. (1997). The infirmary complex at Ely. Archaeology Journal, 154, 118–172.
Horden, P. (2007). A non-natural environment: Medicine without doctors and the medieval European hospital. In B. S. Bowers (Ed.), The medieval hospital and medical practice (pp. 133–146). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Hughes, J. (1991). The administration of confession in the diocese of York in the fourteenth century. In D. M. Smith (Ed.), Studies in clergy and ministry in medieval England (pp. 87–163). York: Borthwick Publications.
Jamison, C. (1952). The history of the Royal Hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower of London. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jouanna, J. (2001). Hippocrates (M. B. Devoise, Trans.). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Jouanna, J. (2012). Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers (N. Allies, Trans.). Leiden: Brill.
Lindberg, D. C. (1992). The beginnings of Western science: The European scientific tradition in philosophical, religious and institutional contexts, 600 BC–AD 1450. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Littré, É. (Ed.). (1839–1861). Œuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, (10 vols, vol. VI). Paris: Ballière (1962) (Reprint. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert).
Loewen, P. (2013). Music in early Franciscan thought. Leiden: Brill.
Manzalaoui, M. (1954). The Secreta Secretorum in English thought and literature from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century with a preliminary survey of the origins of the secreta. Unpublished DPhil, University of Oxford.
Manzalaoui, M. (1977). Secretum secretorum: Nine english versions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCleery, I. (2014). ‘Christ more powerful that Galen?’ The relationship between medicine and miracles. In M. Mesley & L. E. Wilson (Eds.), Contextualizing miracles in the Christian West, 1100–1500: New historical approaches (pp. 127–154). Oxford: Medium Ævum.
McNeill, J. T. (1932). Medicine for Sin as prescribed in the Penitentials. Church History, 1, 14–26.
Murray, J. (1991). Sexuality and spirituality: The intersection of medieval theology and medicine. Fides et Historia, 23, 20–36.
Nicoud, M. (2007). Les régimes de santé au Moyen Âge: naissance et diffusion d'une écriture médicale (13e-15e siècle) (Vol. 2). Rome: Ecole Française de Rome.
Nutton, V. (1995). Medicine in the Greek World, 800–50 BC. In L. I. Conrad et al. (Eds.), The Western medical tradition (pp. 19–22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Packard, F. R. (1922). History of the school of Salernum. In J. Packard, F. R. Garrison, & F. H. Harington (Eds.), The school of Salernum: Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, the English version by Sir John Harington. London: Oxford University Press.
Paravicini-Bagliani, A. (2000). The Pope’s body (D. S. Peterson, trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Park, K. (1992). Medicine and society in medieval Europe, 500–1500. In A. Wear (Ed.), Medicine in society: Historical essays (pp. 59–90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Park, K., & Henderson, J. (1991). ‘The first hospital among Christians’: The Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence. Medical History, 35, 164–188.
Paynell, T. (Trans.). (1528). Regimen sanitatis Salerni, Sig. Aiijr. London.
Rawcliffe, C. (1995). Medicine and society in later medieval Europe. Stroud: Alan Sutton Pub.
Rawcliffe, C. (1999). Medicine for the soul: The medieval english hospital and the quest for spiritual health. In J. R. Hinnells & R. Porter (Eds.), Religion, health and suffering (pp. 316–338). Abingdon: Routledge.
Rawcliffe, C. (2002). Curing bodies and healing souls: Pilgrimage and the sick in medieval East Anglia. In C. Morris & P. Roberts (Eds.), Pilgrimage: The english experience from Becket to Bunyan (pp. 108–140). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawcliffe, C. (2008). Christ the physician walks the wards: Celestial therapeutics in the medieval hospital. In M. Davies & A. Prescott (Eds.), London and the Kingdom: Essays in honour of Caroline Baron (pp. 78–97). Donington: Paul Watkins Publishing.
Risse, G. B. (1999). Mending bodies, saving souls: A history of hospitals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robinson, M. (2000). Johannes Hispalensis and the manuscript tradition: The history surrounding the time of John of Seville and the spread of his Work. Unpublished PhD, University of Exeter.
Ross, W. O. (Ed.). (1940). Middle English Sermons (no. 209, p. 9, 56). London: Early English Text Society.
Rubin, M. (1992). What did the Eucharist mean to thirteenth-century villagers? In P. R. Coss & S. D. Lloyd (Eds.), Thirteenth century England IV (pp. 47–56). Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.
Slack, P. (1979). Mirrors of health and treasures of poor men: The use of vernacular medical literature in Tudor England. In C. Webster (Ed.), Health, medicine and mortality in the 16th century (pp. 237–274). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Southern, R. (1986). Robert Grosseteste: The growth of an english mind in medieval Europe. Oxford: Clarendon.
Steele, R. (Ed.). (1894). Lydgate & Burgh’s Secrees of old Philisoffres, A Version of the ‘Secreta Secretorum’ edited from Sloane (no. 66, MS. 2464, stanza 194, ll. 1352–54, 43). Oxford: Early English Text Society (reprint 1973).
Steele, R. (Ed.). (1898). Three prose versions of the Secreta Secretorum (Vol. 74, p. 82). Oxford: Early English Text Society.
Thompson, A. H. (1937). The history of the hospital and the new college of the annunciation of St Mary in the Newarke, Leicester. Leicester: E. Backus.
Touwaide, A. (2014). Galen. In T. F. Glick, S. Livesey, & F. Wallis (Eds.), Medieval science, technology and medicine: An Encyclopaedia (pp. 179–182). New York: Routledge.
Walker Bynum, C. (1987). Holy feast and holy fast: The religious significance of food to medieval women. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wenzel, S. (Ed. & Trans.). (1989). Fasiculus Morum: A fourteenth-century Preacher’s handbook. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press.
Yoshikawa, N. (2009). Holy medicine and diseases of the soul: Henry of Lancaster and Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines. Medical History, 53, 397–414.
Ziegler, J. (2001). Medicine and immortality in terrestrial paradise. In P. Biller & J. Ziegle (Eds.), Religion and medicine and the Middle ages (pp. 201–242). York: York Medieval Press.
Manuscripts
British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra C V, ff. 25r -28v.
Cambridge University Library, MS Ii. 6.17, ff. 5–6.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bonfield, C. (2016). Medicine for the Body and Soul: Healthy Living in the Age of Bishop Grosseteste c. 1100–1400. In: Cunningham, J.P., Hocknull, M. (eds) Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33468-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33468-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33466-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33468-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)