Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Social and Cultural Approaches to Health, Weakness and Care

Description

This volume discusses infirmitas ('infirmity' or 'weakness') in ancient and medieval societies. It concentrates on the cultural, social and domestic aspects of physical and mental illness, impairment and health, and also examines frailty as a more abstract, cultural construct. It seeks to widen our understanding of how physical and mental well-being and weakness were understood and constructed in the longue duree from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The chapters are written by experts from a variety of disciplines, including archaeology, art history and philology, and pay particular attention to the differences of experience due to gender, age and social status. The book opens with chapters on the more theoretical aspects of pre-modern infirmity and disability, moving on to discuss different types of mental and cultural infirmities, including those with positive connotations, such as medieval stigmata. The last section of the book discusses infirmity in everyday life from the perspective of healing, medicine and care. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Figures and Tables......Page 8 Notes on Contributors......Page 10 Preface......Page 14 Introduction Infirmitas in Antiquity and the Middle Ages......Page 16 PART I Defining Infirmity and Disability......Page 28 1 Age, Agency and Disability: Suetonius and the Emperors of the First Century CE......Page 30 2 Infirmitas or Not? Short-statured Persons in Ancient Greece......Page 44 3 Performing Dis/ability? Constructions of ‘Infirmity’ in Late Medieval and Early Modern Life Writing......Page 66 4 Nobility, Community and Physical Impairment in Later Medieval Canonization Processes......Page 82 5 Towards a Glossary of Depression and Psychological Distress in Ancient Roman Culture......Page 98 PART II Societal and Cultural Infirmitas......Page 116 6 The Crusader’s Stigmata: True Crusading and the Wounds of Christ in the Crusade Ideology of the Thirteenth Century......Page 118 7 Illness, Self-inflicted Body Pain and Supernatural Stigmata: Three Ways of Identification with the Suffering Body of Christ......Page 134 8 Imagery of Disease, Poison and Healing in the Late Fourteenth-century Polemics against Waldensian Heresy......Page 152 9 Infirmitas Romana and its Cure – Livy’s History Therapy in the Ab urbe condita......Page 168 PART III Infirmity, Healing and Community......Page 184 10 From Mithridatium to Potio Sancti Pauli: The Idea of a Medicine from Antiquity to the Middle Ages......Page 186 11 Alternative Medicine in Pre-Roman and Republican Italy: Sacred Springs, Curative Baths and ‘Votive Religion’......Page 200 12 Bathing the Infirm: Water Basins in Roman Iconography and Household Contexts......Page 216 13 Sexual Incapacity in Medieval Materia Medica......Page 238 14 Miracles and the Body Social:Infirmi in the Middle Dutch Miracle Collection of Our Lady of Amersfoort......Page 256 15 Saints, Healing and Communities in the Later Middle Ages: On Roles and Perceptions......Page 270 Bibliography......Page 280 Index......Page 328