Joseph Ziegler

Medicine and Religion c. 1300: The Case of Arnau de Vilanova

Introduction The Language of the Physicians who Produce Spiritual Texts Medicine as a Vehicle for Religious Speculation Medicine for the Preachers Medicine and Religion: Between Competition and Cooperation Conclusions Appendices Bibliography Index

The Medieval kidney

This article surveys the various perceptions of the kidney and its pathologies by encyclopedists, preachers, nat- ural philosophers, surgeons and academic physicians around 1300. It focuses on the medical works of Arnau de Vilanova (d. 1311) and shows the medical discourse about the kidney in all its complexity. It draws attention to the incorporation of the medical nephrological debate into the scholastic frame, and to the close links between nephrology and astrology as well as alchemy.

Philosophers and physicians on the scientific validity of Latin physiognomy, 1200-1500.

The article surveys and contextualizes the main arguments among philosophers and academic physicians surrounding the status of physiognomy as a valid science from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. It suggests that despite constant doubts, learned Latin physiognomy in the later Middle Ages was recognized by natural philosophers (William of Spain, Jean Buridan, William of Mirica) and academic physicians (Rolandus Scriptor, Michele Savonarola, Bartolomeo della Rocca [Cocles]) as a body of knowledge rooted in a sound theoretical basis. Physiognomy was characterized by stability and certainty. As a demonstrative science it was expected to provide rational explanation for every bodily sign. In this respect, learned physiognomy in the Middle Ages was dramatically different from its classical sources, from Islamic and possibly from early-modern physiognomy as well.

Michele Savonarola: Medicina e cultura di corte (review)

ernment minister who designs systems while too often forgetting the common good, the needs of the patient (“evidence-based medicine” is roundly denounced: p. 247), or medical ethics, without knowing how to understand the “patient–king” or the rising popularity of alternative medicine in an age where health systems are “over-medicalized,” over-technologized, and increasingly bankrupt. As Moulin admits in her preface, this book is the fruit of a personal, intimate reflection. Consequently, it is difficult to categorize. It is neither a popular study, nor a work of medical history as we generally use the term. It is packed full of literary, cinematographic, and theological references, as well as personal experiences. One might think of it as a biography, but that of Moulin herself, the ultimate foreign doctor. However one may choose to read it, Moulin, like Natalie Davis in her Trickster Travels,1 offers up a compelling narrative on the so-called “clash of civilizations,” revealing a range of spaces of communication and mediation and forms of medical cosmopolitanism, and disturbing the scientific relationship between “center” and “peripheries.” She shows us that medical expertise, regardless of the medical system to which it is attached, transcends cultural tensions, hatreds (she notes that Israeli and Palestinian doctors collaborate regularly), as well as conflicts of gender (the book is in fact dedicated to Dr. Yvette Viallard, who in the 1950s took X-rays of Imam Ahmed, the last king of Yemen, for the first time: pp. 284–86). Finally, Moulin reminds her French readers that the history of medicine, much neglected in France, is a field of research that should serve the cause of a well-meaning medical pluralism and not simply reinforce the supposed superiority of Western biomedicine.

Medical Similes in Religious Discourse: The Case of Giovanni di San Gimignano OP (ca. 1260–ca. 1333)

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, medicine had acquired a cultural role in addition to its traditional function as a therapeutic art. Medical subject matter infiltrated the religious discourse via the new thirteenth-century encyclopedic literature. Preachers came to employ in their moral analogies a wider range of medical topics, using sophisticated medical examples and citations attributed to recognized medical authorities. These developments coincided with the growing prestige of medicine as an academic discipline.

Reflections on the Jewry Oath in the Middle Ages

The Jewry Oath ( juramentum Judaeorum, Judeneid ) was the judicial oath demanded from Jews involved in legal litigation when summoned to appear in a Christian court both as plaintiffs and defendants. The special formulae which were created for the Jews, who could not use the Christian formulae, usually included two parts: a ceremony and a verbal part. The ceremony could be long and elaborate, but was usually short and simple. The swearing Jew was asked to lay his right hand on a scroll of the Torah, the Pentateuch, or from the later thirteenth century, though more rarely, even on the Talmud. Sometimes more specific instructions were given, and the hand had to be laid on the page of the Ten Commandments, or even specifically on the commandment prohibiting the taking of the name of the Lord in vain (Exodus 20. 7). The verbal part included an invocation of God, a judicial declaration regarding the nature of the obligation corroborated by the oath, and a list of maledictions which would be inflicted in the case of perjury. The oath itself could be taken in a synagogue or at its gate, but usually it was conducted in the court itself on a Jewish holy book kept there specially for that purpose.