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The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy

This article discusses the interlinkage of medicine and the miraculous in the healing actions of living saints, based on the canonisation dossiers of St Francesca Romana (1440–53) and St Francesco di Paola (1512–17). These documents include a large number of miracles performed by saints during their...

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Autor principal: Kuuliala, Jenni
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8408436/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34483730
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaa053
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author Kuuliala, Jenni
author_facet Kuuliala, Jenni
author_sort Kuuliala, Jenni
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description This article discusses the interlinkage of medicine and the miraculous in the healing actions of living saints, based on the canonisation dossiers of St Francesca Romana (1440–53) and St Francesco di Paola (1512–17). These documents include a large number of miracles performed by saints during their lifetime, and in a large proportion of these cases, the holy person administered some kind of medical substance to an infirm devotee before or while performing the miracle. While the commissioners of canonisation inquests had to determine that the cure was of a miraculous origin, it appears that for the devotees the medical and miraculous acts were an inseparable part of the same continuum. Occasional conflicts arose with medical professionals, but the living saints also collaborated with them. The connection of a medicating saint and a miracle-performing saint is thus an essential aspect of the medical pluralism of late medieval and early modern societies.
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spelling pubmed-84084362021-09-02 The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy Kuuliala, Jenni Soc Hist Med Original Article This article discusses the interlinkage of medicine and the miraculous in the healing actions of living saints, based on the canonisation dossiers of St Francesca Romana (1440–53) and St Francesco di Paola (1512–17). These documents include a large number of miracles performed by saints during their lifetime, and in a large proportion of these cases, the holy person administered some kind of medical substance to an infirm devotee before or while performing the miracle. While the commissioners of canonisation inquests had to determine that the cure was of a miraculous origin, it appears that for the devotees the medical and miraculous acts were an inseparable part of the same continuum. Occasional conflicts arose with medical professionals, but the living saints also collaborated with them. The connection of a medicating saint and a miracle-performing saint is thus an essential aspect of the medical pluralism of late medieval and early modern societies. Oxford University Press 2020-07-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8408436/ /pubmed/34483730 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaa053 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) ), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Original Article
Kuuliala, Jenni
The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy
title The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy
title_full The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy
title_fullStr The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy
title_full_unstemmed The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy
title_short The Saint as Medicator: Medicine and the Miraculous in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy
title_sort saint as medicator: medicine and the miraculous in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century italy
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8408436/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34483730
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaa053
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