Peregrine Horden

The Locus of Care : Families, Communities, Institutions, and the Provision of Welfare Since Antiquity

The care of the needy and the sick is delivered by various groups including immediate family, the wider community, religious organisations and the State funded institutions. The Locus of Care provides an historical perspective on welfare detailing who carers were in the past, where care was provided, and how far the boundary between family and state or informal and organised institutions have changed over time. Eleven international contributors provide a wide-ranging examination of themes, such as child care, mental health, and provision for the elderly and question the idea that there has been a recent evolutionary shift from informal provision to institutional care. Chapters on Europe and England use case studies and link evidence from ancient and medieval periods to contemporary problems and the recent past, whilst studies on China and South Africa look to the future of welfare throughout the world. By placing welfare in its historical, social, cultural and demographic contexts, Locus of Care reassesses community and institutional care and the future expectations of welfare provision.

What's Wrong with Early Medieval Medicine?

The medical writings of early medieval western Europe c. 700 – c. 1000 have often been derided for their disorganised appearance, poor Latin, nebulous conceptual framework, admixtures of magic and folklore, and general lack of those positive features that historians attribute to ancient or later medieval medicine. This paper attempts to rescue the period from its negative image. It examines a number of superficially bizarre writings so as to place them in an intellectual and sociological context, and to suggest that the presumed contrast between them and their ancient and later medieval counterparts has been wrongly drawn.

Mediterranean excuses: Historical writing on the mediterranean since Braudel

I borrow the main term of my title from a recent paper by the anthropologist Michael Herzfeld, in which he once again interprets the sin of “Mediterraneanism” that he invented. Now he sees it as an “excuse” of various kinds—political, cultural, even (in a scholarly sense) heuristic. He argues, rightly, that the category “Mediterranean” should be an object of ethnographic enquiry: it should lie within our frame, whether we are ethnographers or historians; it should not constitute the frame itself. In this article, therefore, I try to see what the Mediterranean has been an excuse for within modern historical writing: first, briefly, in Braudel; then in four alternatives to Braudel that I detect in the present age of late postmodernism: that of the “reductivist”, the “rhapsode”, the “reflexive” and the “realist”. I end by outlining the eclectic “reflexive realism” of Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea (2000).

Heidegger as Mediterraneanist

Western philosophy has often been permeated by Mediterranean imagery. Even so, the writings of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger might not seem the obvious place for a Mediterranean that is more than an occasional simile. We argue, however, that, especially in his writings on art, Heidegger does articulate a vision of the Mediterranean that is fundamental to his thought. It takes in Provence, Heidegger’s adoptive homeland, seen through the paintings executed there by Paul Cezanne; Greece, the homeland of philosophy; and the Mediterranean Sea as the link between the two areas. To those interpreters of Heidegger who have seen him as rooted in German soil, we offer an alternative reading, in which he is philosophically most at home on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The Maritime, the Ecological, the Cultural—and the Fig Leaf: Prospects for Medieval Mediterranean Studies

This contribution reflects on recent developments in Mediterranean studies. It places current scholarly dispositions in the context of an unapologetically personal overview of Mediterranean historiography since the 1990s, and suggests some caveats about the likely future of Mediterranean studies so far as the Middle Ages are concerned. I detect four ways in which the sea and its region are being pressed into service in historical scholarship. The first is as a fig leaf—for what is thought less romantic, much smaller than the Mediterranean and part of it in only a very limited and far from crucial way. The second is the maritime—according to which it is predominantly the ensemble of Mediterranean-wide crossings that makes Mediterranean history. The third is the ecological approach, of The Corrupting Sea . Less in fashion, it is summarized here in readiness for a possible return to favour. Fourth and finally, there is the broadly “culturological,” which I close by critiquing.

Reflections: Talking Mediterranean

Reflecting back on the colloquium, Catlos suggests that Mediterranean studies should not be conceived of as a new, rigidly conceived paradigm to replace old, rigidly conceived paradigms, but rather a loose approach to certain problems that old approaches do not seem to be able to account for. Kinoshita notes the inevitable problems that come with terminology as it becomes associated with certain concrete concepts, and reflects on the composite nature of the Mediterranean. Hilsdale sees in the “thalassal optic” and the Mediterranean a means of distinguishing overlapping circles of influence that together lend meaning to objects. Farago sees in the Mediterranean frame, the potential to build out further towards a global understanding of art and culture. Finally, Horden reflects on the inevitability of politics invading our historical and cultural discourses, however determinedly we might wish to avoid it.

Médecine et religion: Collaborations, compétitions, conflits (XII e –XX e siècle) ed. by Maria Pia Donato etal. (review)

lenges associated with researching the Annunziate: unlike other Italian charitable institutions in cities such as Florence, Milan, Siena, or Venice, the records of the Annunziate were not kept in a single archive but instead were dispersed across a variety of archives and collections in Naples and southern Italy. Marino’s talent as an archival specialist shines in this section as he offers a cohesive account of the available documentation, complete with an inventory of the various archives, collections, and locations where these materials can be found today. His focus on archives is continued in the third and final section of the book, which contains transcriptions of ten royal documents (privileges and patents) from the archives of the Annunziata. Spanning 1383 to 1473, these documents serve to demonstrate Marino’s prior emphasis on the interest taken by both Angevin and Aragonese rulers in this important charitable institution.

Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity (review)

What has Cos to do with Jerusalem? Reworded,Tertullian’s famous question focuses on the relationship between early Christianity and the medicine associated with Hippocrates. No modern discussion of this can proceed very far without some reference to the writings of Darrel Amundsen and Gary Ferngren. For more than thirty years, both individually and in collaboration, they have offered overviews and particular studies of “healing and medicine in Christianity,”to quote their title in the Encyclopedia of Religion. Their articles, covering the Middle Ages as well as antiquity, are characterized by accessibility to the nonspecialist, full deployment of the secondary literature, a broad sociological framework, and sensitivity to current ethical issues. They also betray a deep familiarity with the primary evidence that is sometimes obscured by footnoting of translations only. Amundsen’s most influential papers were collected in Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Baltimore, 1996) and prefaced by a helpful typology of how medicine and religion can interrelate and how the early church Fathers viewed medicine (with nuanced approbation, not fundamental hostility). Now Gary Ferngren has at last followed suit. He reworks, and blends into a monograph, nine previously published papers, two of them written with Amundsen.