Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture

Description

The spectacle of the wounded body figured prominently in the Middle Ages, from images of Christ’s wounds on the cross, to the ripped and torn bodies of tortured saints who miraculously heal through divine intervention, to graphic accounts of battlefield and tournament wounds—evidence of which survives in the archaeological record—and literary episodes of fatal (or not so fatal) wounds. This volume offers a comprehensive look at the complexity of wounding and wound repair in medieval literature and culture, bringing together essays from a wide range of sources and disciplines including arms and armaments, military history, medical history, literature, art history, hagiography, and archaeology across medieval and early modern Europe. Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Figures and Tables xi List of Abbreviations xiii List of Contributors xvi xxiv Introduction: Penetrating Medieval Wounds 1 Larissa Tracy and Kelly DeVries Part 1 The Physicality of Wounds Section 1 Archeology and Material Culture 1 Battle Trauma in Medieval Warfare: Wounds, Weapons and Armor 27 Robert C. Woosnam-Savage and Kelly DeVries 2 “And to describe the shapes of the dead”: Making Sense of the Archaeology of Armed Violence 57 M.R. Geldof 3 Visible Prowess?: Reading Men’s Head and Face Wounds in Early Medieval Europe to 1000 CE 81 Patricia Skinner 4 Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes: Injury and Death in Anglo-Scottish Combat, c. 1296–c.1403 102 Iain A. MacInnes 5 “…Vnnd schüß im vnder dem schwert den ort lang ein zů der brust”: The Placement and Consequences of Sword-blows in Sigmund Ringeck’s Fifteenth-Century Fencing Manual 128 Rachel E. Kellett Section 2 Surgery 6 The Diagnosis and Treatment of Wounds in the Old English Medical Collections: Anglo-Saxon Surgery? 153 Debby Banham and Christine Voth 7 Spitting Blood: Medieval Mongol Medical Practices 175 Timothy May 8 The Wounded Soldier: Honey and Late Medieval Military Medicine 194 Ilana Krug 9 “The Depth of Six Inches”: Prince Hal’s Head-Wound at the Battle of Shrewsbury 215 Michael Livingston Section 3 Law 10 Wounds, Amputations, and Expert Procedures in the City of Valencia in the Early-Fifteenth Century 233 Carmel Ferragud 11 The Mutilation of Derbforgaill 252 Charlene M. Eska Part 2 The Spirituality of Wounds Section 4 Stigmata 12 “The Wounded Surgeon”: Devotion, Compassion and Metaphor in Medieval England 269 Virginia Langum 13 “Scarce anyone survives a heart wound”: The Wounded Christ in Irish Bardic Religious Poetry 291 Salvador Ryan 14 Penetrating the Void: Picturing the Wound in Christ’s Side as a Performative Space 313 Vibeke Olson 15 Wandering Wounds: The Urban Body in Imitatio Christi 340 Elina Gertsman Contents vii Section 5 Passionate Wounds 16 Ascetic Blood: Ethics, Sufffering and Community in Late-Medieval Culture 369 Joshua S. Easterling 17 Christ’s Suppurating Wounds: Leprosy in the Vita of Alice of Schaerbeek (†1250) 389 Alicia Spencer-Hall 18 Wounding the Body and Freeing the Spirit: Dorothea von Montau’s Bloody Quest for Christ, a Late-Medieval Phenomenon of the Extraordinary Kind 417 Albrecht Classen 19 In the Bursting of an Eye: Blinding and Blindness in Ireland’s Medieval Hagiography 448 Máire Johnson Part 3 The Literature of Wounds 20 The Laconic Scar in Early Irish Literature 473 William Sayers 21 “Into the hede, throw the helme and creste”: Head Wounds and a Question of Kingship in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur 496 Larissa Tracy 22 “They … toke their shyldys before them and drew oute their swerdys …”: Inflicting and Healing Wounds in Malory’s Morte Darthur 519 Stephen Atkinson 23 Women’s Wounds in Middle English Romances: An Exploration of Defijilement, Disfijigurement, and a Society in Disrepair 544 Barbara A. Goodman Afterword: The Aftermath of Wounds 572 Wendy J. Turner Bibliography 581 Index 635 645