This volume is a fascinating collection of essays on the theme of infirmity, understood very broadly to mean perceived weakness, in both Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Many of the essays originated as papers given at one of the regular series of conferences at the University of Tampere in Finland known as Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. I was lucky enough to be able to attend this particular conference on infirmitas in 2012 and looked forward eagerly to this volume.
The book does not disappoint. It has some of the most interesting essays I have read for a long time on a wide range of topics from Roman baths to illness in medieval ‘life writing’ (early forms of autobiography). The volume is structured thematically rather than chronologically into three broad topics: Defining Infirmity and Disability; Societal and Cultural Infirmity; Infirmity, Healing and Community.
The first theme includes essays on Roman ageing and disability (Harlow and Laurence); short-statured persons in Ancient Greece (Dasen); illness in late medieval life writings (Frohne); physical impairment in the canonisation processes of late medieval saints (Kuuliala); and the vocabulary of psychological distress in Roman culture (Puliga). The second theme includes two very different approaches to the sufferings of Christ and how they were experienced in medieval cultures through the concept of stigmata (Tamminen on the sufferings of crusaders; Klaniczay on saints’ bodily sufferings); ideas of poison and disease in anti-heretical writings (Välmäki); and concepts of the Roman body politic in the writings of Livy (Mustakallio and Pyy). The last theme includes essays on medicinal drugs (Hautala); Roman ‘alternative’ medicines such as bathing (Griffith); Roman household washing basins (Berg); recipes for medieval sexual incapacity (Niiranen); a Middle Dutch miracle collection (Van Mulder); and the roles of healing saints (Krötzl).
There are altogether eight essays on the late Middle Ages, six essays on Antiquity, and just one that covers both periods, as discussed below. It is a pity that there is nothing on the early medieval period, and that there are not more cross-chronological studies. Medievalists like me often look to the early modern period for comparative debates; this volume makes it clear that there is plenty going on in the Ancient world to which we should pay attention, particularly concerning concepts of the body politic and hygiene. It is to be hoped that future authors in this excellent series of conference proceedings coming out of Tampere could be encouraged to be more explicitly comparative, perhaps drawing on discussions at the conference itself. Alternatively, the editors could make more comparisons in their introduction, which ends rather abruptly. It could have gone further in defining infirmity while also considering issues such as retrospective diagnosis, which is done in several essays without much discussion. Otherwise, apart from a very few typing errors and some editorial inconsistencies, such as varying ways of laying out translated and/or original language quotations, this is a well-written volume.
There are some especially strong essays on miracle healing, medicinal drugs and domestic bathing utensils such as basins. The two pieces by Kuuliala and Van Mulder are very good examples of how canonisation processes and miracle collections respectively are still yielding fascinating insights into human experience of illness and injury. Kuuliala takes a thematic approach, looking at the relationship between physical impairment and noble status in a number of late medieval cults (mainly Charles of Blois, Nicholas of Toletino, Thomas of Cantilupe, Dauphine of Puimichel, Pope Urban V, King Louis IX of France). The essay includes a short but very important discussion of battle injuries as represented in miracle narratives. Van Mulder, in contrast, focuses on one much less well-known Middle Dutch miracle collection, that of Our Lady of Amersfoort in the second half of the fifteenth century, paying especial attention to norms of social behaviour. He argues that miracle stories acted as a kind of ‘social glue’ bringing together different aspects of the social body.
The study by Berg of water basins in Roman households, based on analysis of archaeological finds, including many from Pompeii, and images on sarcophagi and in wall paintings, was riveting. Many of the images show basins at the bedside in contexts relating to birth, illness and death. The imagery is strikingly similar to late medieval scenes such as those on deschi da parto (Italian trays given as birth gifts), or in frescoes of the birth of the Virgin Mary or of John the Baptist. One wonders whether late medieval artists knew of similar ancient Roman scenes, like those included by Berg in nicely presented black and white images. Or is it possible that medieval basins just continued to play crucial yet often overlooked roles in the human life cycle? This essay is a particularly good example of how further cross-chronological comparisons could have been even more illuminating.
The last essay of particular note in a rich collection is that of Hautala on the changing nature of medicinal drugs such as mithridatium between Ancient Greece and the sixteenth century. The interdisciplinary approach (the author is both an anthropologist and a classicist) argues that drugs and all ingredients contained within them are highly unstable substances with complex cultural histories and competing forms of expertise and authority over their use. Drugs are just as much cultural artefacts as texts.
All in all, this is a really interesting interdisciplinary volume. It will provide historians and archaeologists with interests in health and disability with much to think about for some time to come. Hopefully it will open up new avenues of comparative research across traditional chronological boundaries.
