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Holy Medicine and Diseases of the Soul: Henry of Lancaster and Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Affiliation:
Prof. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shizuoka University, 422–8529 Japan.
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Medical History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 397 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2009. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 E J Arnould (ed.), Le livre de seyntz medicines: the unpublished devotional treatise of Henry of Lancaster (to be abbreviated as the Livre), Anglo-Norman Texts 2, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1940; repr New York, Johnson Reprint, 1967. All citations from the Livre are from this edition: translation appears in the text, with the original text in footnotes. I would like to thank Dr Catherine Batt for her tremendous generosity in sharing her translation in progress with me. Henry’s Anglo-Norman devotional treatise survives complete in two manuscripts. The text of Arnould’s edition is that of the manuscript which belongs to the library of Stonyhurst College, Lancaster. This manuscript was at some point in the possession of Baron Thomas Carew (d. 1429), who gave it to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester (1391–1447). Both the language and the provenance suggest that the readership of the Livre would most likely have been educated aristocrats. A partial translation of the text based on Arnould’s edition (pp. 207–28) is contained in M Teresa Tavormina, ‘Henry of Lancaster, The Book of Holy Medicines’, in Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas H Bestul (eds), Cultures of piety: medieval English devotional literature in translation, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 19–40.

2 Tavormina, ‘Henry of Lancaster’, op. cit. note 1 above, pp. 19–20.

3 Faye Getz, Medicine in the English Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 29.

4 For a recent study of eucharistic piety, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful blood: theology and practice in late medieval northern Germany and beyond, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

5 For the notion of Christus medicus and its history, see R Arbesmann, ‘The concept of “Christus medicus” in St Augustine’, Traditio, 1954, 10: 1–28, p. 3.

6 Carole Rawcliffe (ed. and transl.), Sources for the history of medicine in late medieval England, Kalamazoo, MI, Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1995, p. 4.

7 Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine and society in later medieval England, Stroud, Alan Sutton, 1995, p. 58.

8 See Jacques Le Goff, La naissance du purgatoire, Paris, Gallimard, 1981, pp. 288–95; R N Swanson, Religion and devotion in Europe, c.1215–c.1515, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 25–30; Peter Biller and A J Minnis (eds), Handling sin: confession in the Middle Ages, York, York Medieval Press, 1998.

9 Sarah Hamilton, The practice of penance, 900–1050, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2001, pp. 5, 7, 10.

10 The Fourth Lateran Council was largely framed in response to the threat of the dualist Cathers of southern France, whose anti-sacramentalism was countered by Canon 21. Dyan Elliott, Proving woman: female spirituality and inquisitional culture in the later Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 2004, p, 11. For eucharistic piety and women, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987, ch. 4.

11 Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in medieval England, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2006, p. 339.

12 John Myrc, Instructions for parish priests, Edward Peacock (ed.), EETS OS 31, London, Oxford University Press, 1868, p. 10; Peregrine Horden, ‘A non-natural environment: medicine without doctors and the medieval European hospital’, in Barbara S Bowers (ed.), The medieval hospital and medical practice, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, pp. 133–45, on p. 141. I would like to thank Dr Christopher Bonfield for drawing my attention to this article.

13 Elliott, op. cit., note 10 above, p. 204.

14 Ibid., p. 206.

15 Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, The Pope’s body, trans. David S Peterson, University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 186.

16 Ibid., p. 188.

17 Getz, op. cit., note 3 above, pp. 24–30.

18 H S Bennett, ‘Science and information in English writings of the fifteenth century’, Mod. Lang. Rev., 1944, 39: 1–8, p. 3; Christopher Bonfield, ‘The first instrument of medicine: diet and regimens of health in late medieval England, c.1348–1550’ (forthcoming).

19 Personalized versions of the regimen were tailored for the social elite to regulate their life style. Humphrey of Gloucester (d.1447), who had a collection of medical books in his library, benefited from his close connection with Gilbert Kymer, the Oxford chancellor, priest and physician, who composed a special regimen for his patron.

20 John Shinners and William J Dohar (eds), Pastors and the care of souls, Notre Dame University Press, 1998, p. 171.

21 F J Furnivall (ed.), Robert of Brunne’s ‘Handlyng synne’, EETS OS 119, 123, London, Kegan Paul, 1901, 1903.

22 For example, it informs the audience of the therapeutic and purgative functions of confession. See Siegfried Wenzel (ed. and transl.), Facsiculus morum: a fourteenth-century preacher’s handbook, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989, pp. 254–7, 594–7.

23 Joseph Ziegler, ‘Medical similes in religious discourse: the case of Giovannni di San Gimignano OP (ca. 1250–ca. 1333), Sciences in Context, 1995, 8: 103–31, p. 103.

24 Apart from any spiritual benefits confession may have had, it also imparted some physical improvements due to the psychosomatic effect of relieving the mind from any burden or guilt which may have been causing stress and worry. For a discussion on the psychological state of an individual having a real effect on his or her health, see Michael R McVaugh, ‘Bedside manners in the Middle Ages’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1997, 71: 201–23, pp. 212–14.

25 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 181: “tresdouz Sires, eietz mercy de moy et me donetz grace qe jeo peusse ou ma lang garrir l’ord plaie de ma bouche, et nettoier de l’ordure qe y est ou ma lange, c’est a dire par regeier les ordes pecchés de ma bouche ou touz les autres par verraie confessione ou tristece de coer.”

26 H J Schroeder, Disciplinary decrees of the general councils, St Louis, MO, B Herder, 1937, p. 263.

27 Darrel W Amundsen, Medicine, society, and faith in the ancient and medieval worlds, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 201.

28 A Hamilton Thompson, The history of the hospital and the New College of the Annunciation of St Mary in the Newarke, Leicester, Leicester, E Backus, 1937, pp. 12–20, 29.

29 Ibid., p. 18.

30 Tavormina, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 22.

31 For example, a hundred casks of wine were prepared for his sojourn at Avignon over Christmas in 1354. Thompson, op. cit., note 28 above, p. 27.

32 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 85–6.

33 Nancy G Siraisi, Medieval and early Renaissance medicine: an introduction to knowledge and practice, University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 86–8.

34 Katharine Park, Secrets of women: gender, generation, and the origins of human dissection, New York, Zone Books, 2006, p. 15.

35 Ibid., p. 19.

36 Rawcliffe, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 18.

37 See, for example, Woodburn O Ross (ed.), Middle English sermons, EETS OS 209, London, Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 126.

38 Carole Rawcliffe, ‘Christ the physician walks the wards: celestial therapeutics in the medieval hospital’, in Clive Burgess (ed.), London and the kingdom: essays in honour of Caroline Baron, Proceedings of the 21st Harlaxton Symposium (Shaun Tyas, forthcoming). I am grateful to Professor Rawcliffe for prepublication access to her essay.

39 See Thompson, op. cit., note 28 above, pp. 18, 47.

40 Rawcliffe, op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 58–9.

41 G E Trease, ‘The spicers and apothecaries of the royal household in the reigns of Henry III, Edward I and Edward II’, Nottingham Mediaeval Studies, 1959, 3: 19–52, p. 37.

42 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, On the properties of things: John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus ‘De proprietatibus rerum’, M C Seymour, et al. (eds), 2 vols, Oxford, Clarendon, 1975, vol. 2, bk. 19, p. 1329. Angela Montford notes that the Dominicans purchased goats’ milk for medicinal use: see Health, sickness, medicine and the friars in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004, pp. 187–8.

43 Catherine Batt, ‘Henry, duke of Lancaster’s Book of Holy Medicines: the rhetoric of knowledge and devotion’, Leeds Studies in English, 2006, 37: 407–14, p. 411. For medical recommendation of springtime herbs, see Tony Hunt, Popular medicine in thirteenth-century England, Cambridge, D S Brewer, 1990, p. 77.

44 Clarissa W Atkinson, The oldest vocation: Christian motherhood in the Middle Ages, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 142.

45 See further Marina Warner, Alone of all her sex: the myth and the cult of the Virgin Mary, New York, Vintage, 1983, p. 200.

46 For the iconography, see the detail of the retable of St Bernard by the Master of Palma (c.1290), reproduced in Bynum, op. cit., note 10 above, plate 18.

47 Ibid., pp. 271–2.

48 Nicholas Vincent, Holy blood: King Henry III and the Westminster blood relic, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 34.

49 Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, Margery Kempe’s meditations: the context of medieval devotional literature, liturgy and iconography, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2007, pp. 21–2.

50 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 147–8.

51 Montford, op. cit., note 42 above, p. 181.

52 Theodoric, The surgery of Theodoric, ca. A.D. 1267, transl. Eldridge Campbell and James Colton, 2 vols, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955, vol. 1, p. 49.

53 It is indebted to the tradition of planctus lyrics. See the twelfth-century Maestae parentis Christi, in Clemens Blume (ed.), Analecta hymnica medii aevi, 55 vols, Leipzig, 1886–1922; repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1961, vol. 54, p. 320.

54 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 145–6: “Benoite doit estre clamee celle bon grap qe si meure devient par ceo qe si pres cressoit de solail et si haut en foy, qe si chaude estoit le ray de solail, qe un ardant amour si entroit en celle grape, qe si tresmeure la fist, qe quant elle estoit myse en pressour de dolour, elle nous engetta si preciouse vyn de ses douz oeux, qe celuy a qi cest vyn ne purroit savourer est en malveise poynt, et les plaies serroient trop perillouses et trop pleines d’ordure qe ceo vyn ne purroit nettoier par laver, et ceo vyn estoit blank come de mult cleres lermes et a grande foison come d’un grap; et ausi grande est la bosoigne pur tant de plaies laver et si ordes.”

55 Vincent, op. cit., note 48 above, p. 175; G Schiller, Iconography of Christian art, transl. J Seligman, 2 vols, London, 1971–2, vol. 2, pp. 228–9.

56 St Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum LV, Patrologia Latina, XXXVI, 649. See Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, ‘The mystic winepress in the Mérode altarpiece’, in Irving Lavin and John Plummer (eds), Studies in late medieval and Renaissance painting in honour of Millard Meiss, 2 vols, New York University Press, 1977, vol. 1, pp. 297–301, on p. 299.

57 Though rather late as an example, the Mérode altarpiece by Robert Campin (c. 1425–30, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection), shows the Annunciation scene in the centre panel. On the right wing, Joseph, the carpenter, is depicted making a winepress, which prefigures Christ’s Passion.

58 James H Marrow, Passion iconography in northern European art of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: a study of the transformation of sacred metaphor into descriptive narrative, Kortrijk, Belgium, Van Ghemmert, 1979, p. 83. ‘Christ in winepress, the cloister church of Kleinkomburg, Germany’, is reproduced in this volume, p. 83, fig. 58.

59 Terence Scully, The art of cookery in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1995, p. 164.

60 Judith Spencer (transl.), The four seasons of the house of Cerruti, New York, Facts on File, 1984, p. 64.

61 Scully, op. cit., note 59 above, p. 165. For the same method of distillation for domestic use, see Georgine E Brereton and Janet M Ferrier (eds), Le Menagier de Paris, Oxford, Clarendon, 1981, pp. 272–3.

62 Theodoric, op. cit., note 52 above, vol. 2, p. 135.

63 See Penny Hebgin-Barnes, The medieval stained glass of the county of Lincolnshire, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 290, sII 4–7b.

64 See the Livre, op. cit. note 1 above, pp. 150–1.

65 Ibid., pp. 170–88. Before proceeding to the treatment, Henry makes a digression to explain that, when a wound becomes inflamed by “hellfire” (ergotism) the limb is amputated, thus showing his knowledge of surgery: see ibid., p. 164.

66 Atkinson, op. cit., note 44 above, p. 142.

67 The blood of St Thomas à Becket was venerated at Canterbury because, mixed with water, it could be used to cure many ailments. The blood was deemed to be efficacious in cleansing sin and removing evil. See Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the medieval mind: theory, record, and event 1000–1215, rev. ed., Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1987, pp. 100–3.

68 Bynum, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 271–2.

69 A related devotion to the Sacred Heart was cultivated by the nuns of the Saxon monastery at Helfta. Mary Jeremy Finnegan, The women of Helfta: scholars and mystics, Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 1991, pp. 133–43. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, spreading rapidly around 1400 by means of the Books of Hours, had an influence on English mysticism: see Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England 1400–1580, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 244–5.

70 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 186.

71 See, for example, the Crucifixion by Giotto (Arena Chapel, Padua, c. 1305).

72 Faye Marie Getz (ed.), Healing and society in medieval England: a middle English translation of the pharmaceutical writings of Gilbertus Anglicus, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, p. 12.

73 John Henderson, The Renaissance hospital: healing the body and healing the soul, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 314; Muriel Laharie, La folie au moyen age, xie–xiiie siècles, Paris, Léopard d’Or, 1991, p. 221.

74 Christopher Bonfield, ‘The Regimen sanitatis and its dissemination in England, c.1348–1550’, PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, 2006, pp. 63–4. I am grateful to Dr Bonfield and Ms Joy Hawkins for drawing my attention to this point.

75 E Ruth Harvey, The inward wits: psychological theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, London, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1975, pp. 15–16.

76 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, op. cit., note 42 above, vol. 1, bk. 3, p. 99.

77 Rawcliffe, op. cit. note 11 above, p. 67.

78 Livre, op. cit. note 1 above, pp. 162–3: “Ore, si de cest frenesie doie avoir santee, il me covenera prendre cel cook ensi apparaillé et mettre sur ma fieble teste, pur conforter les espiritz, et les sens de la teste mettre a poynt … Et le cook rouge, c’estes vous, tresdouz Jesus, qi estis, sicom j’ai dit pardevant, myres et medicines, siqe jeo vous prie, beau douz Meistres, qe jeo puisse bone memoire avoir de le rouge cook, et par sa vertue recoverir mon sen en tiele guyse, qe jeo ne pense riens forsqe en vous, ou de vous, ou pur vous.” [My italics.]

79 Batt, op. cit., note 43 above, pp. 411–12.

80 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 195: “Beau Sires Dieux, vous estes le chapon qi suastes, et de vous degouteront tant des goutes d’un licour qe feust come sank tresprecious et tresseinte, et c’estoit devant vostre dure passion, quant vous, douz Sires, adorastes a vostre Piere en ciel et luy requistes moelt doucement qe, si il luy pleust, il vous desportast de celle mort et de celuy fer et dur turment qi a venir vous estoit; nepurquant, qe sa volenté feust toutdis acomplie devant la vostre.”

81 Edward Grant (ed.), A source book in medieval science, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1974, p. 776.

82 See an altarpiece of c.1500 from the Collegiate Church of Laufen near Basel, reproduced in Carole Rawcliffe, ‘Hospital nurses and their work’, in Richard Britnell (ed.), Daily life in the late Middle Ages, Stroud, Sutton, 1998, pp. 43–64, on p. 60.

83 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 199–202.

84 Montford, op. cit., note 42 above, p. 187. Montford also notes that pomegranates were used to make fruit wine for consumption in the monastic infirmary.

85 Trease, op. cit., note 41 above, p. 35, n. 110.

86 Batt, op. cit., note 43 above, p. 407.

87 For iconography, see James Hall, Dictionary of subjects and symbols in art, rev. edn, London, John Murray, 1992, p. 249.

88 Livre, op. cit. note 1 above, p. 200: “Celle chalour si est une chaude delite de pecché q’est et ad longement estee en moy; et celle male chalour si crest droit en ma char et me fait si secche —c’est qe par cest chalour jeo perde la moisture, qe deust estre en moi, de Seinte Espirit la grace; et la soif qe j’ai, si est pur la secchetee q’est en moy par defaute de grace: jeo ai soif.” [My italics.] See also Arnould’s marginal gloss to p. 200.

89 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, op. cit., note 42 above, vol, 1, bk. 4, p. 140.

90 Livre, op. cit. note 1 above, p. 202–5.

91 Rawcliffe, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 227.

92 Rawcliffe, op. cit., note 7 above, p. 181.

93 See note 82 above.

94 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 204.

95 Ibid., p. 203.

96 Bynum, op. cit., note 4 above, pp. 171, 268, n. 80, 325, n. 84.

97 The Throne of Grace or the Trinity of Gnadenstuhl represents the Father holding the crucifix with the Holy Spirit in between.

98 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 204–5: “Mes, tresdouz Sires, jeo voz prie qe, en remenbrances de voz dures accesses et precious baigne et de froide lit en qoi voz jeustes apres pur suer, qe jeo puisse pur anguisse, pur doute, et pur honte de mes pecchés … ensi par cele suour, qe jeo puisse estre tout nettement garriz de ma maladie et espurgee de vile et orde pecché.”

99 Pedro Gil Sotres, ‘The regimens of health’, in Mirko D Grmek (ed.), Western medical thought from antiquity to the Middle Ages, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 291–318, on p. 307.

100 See Rawcliffe, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 227.

101 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 207.

102 Ibid., p. 209: “Le lier de plaies et l’envolupure en beaux blancs draples si est a entendre ausi, tresdouz Sires, qe les preciouses medicines, come le benoit let, le seintes lermes, et le preciouse sank, soit bien et ferme envolupee par ferme entencion de bone et nette vie; et la bone entencion se moustre en fait, en dit et en pensé.”

103 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 210.

104 Ibid., pp. 211–27.

105 See ibid., p. 207.

106 See further Rawcliffe, op. cit., note 82 above, p. 48.

107 Thompson, op. cit., note 28 above, p. 18.

108 Livre, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 233: “Et c’est bone custume qe, quant l’en est durement desheitez, qe un femme est ordené a estre delez luy, car plus suef et plus graciousement le manye et toutz choses ly fait plus plesantement qe ne ferroit une homme.”

109 See ibid., pp. 232–8.