Cultivating the Earth, Nurturing the Body and Soul: Daily Life in Early Medieval England

How did food impact social relationships in early medieval England? What cultivation practices were followed, to produce the best possible food supplies? What was the cultural significance of bread? How was the human body nourished? When sickness inevitably occurred, where did one go, and who was consulted for healing? And how was spiritual health also protected? The essays gathered together in this exciting volume draw on a range of different disciplines, from early medieval economic and social history, to experimental archaeology and medieval medicine, to offer a unique overview into day-to-day life in England nearly two millennia ago.

Taking as their starting point the broad research interests of the volume’s honorand, Dr Debby Banham, contributors here offer new insights into the reproduction and ritual use of vernacular charms, examine the collation and translation of medieval medicine, elucidate monastic economies and production, and uncover the circumstances behind the production and transmission of medical manuscripts in early medieval England. Presenting new insights into agricultural practices and animal husbandry, monastic sign language and materia medica, plant knowledge and medical practices, the chapters within this volume not only offer a fitting tribute to Banham’s own groundbreaking work, but also shed new light on what it meant to nurture both body and soul in early medieval England.

List of Illustrations

Introduction
Christine Voth

Part I. Cultivating the Earth

Medieval Ecology, Production, and Service

1. Feeding Lords and Kings. Feorm in Anglo-Saxon England
Rosamond Faith

2. Monastic Economies in Late Anglo-Saxon England
Rory Naismith

3. Were there Hospitals in England before the Normans?
Peregrine Horden

Performance and Ritual

4. Women, Bread, and the Supernatural in Early Medieval Culture
Martha Bayless

5. Field Research. Imagining and Re-Creating Anglo-Saxon Agricultural Protection Formulas
Karen Louise Jolly

6. From Literary Texts to Performative Rituals in Early Medieval England
Lea Olsan

Part II. Nurturing the Body and Soul

Medieval Medicine I: Vocabulary and Language

7. Miracles of Lexicography. Honey from a Bumble Bee
Maria Amalia D’Aronco

8. Knowledge of the Spleen in the Leechbook
Carole P. Biggam

9. The Language of the Leechbooks. Revisiting the Tradition of Vernacular Medicine
Christine Voth

Medieval Medicine II: Compilation and Compilers

10. Foods for Body and Soul. The Application of Late Antique Regimen in Old English Medical Texts
Conan Doyle

11. ‘To Provoke the Menses’. Menstruation and Compilation in the Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus
Bethany Christiansen

12. The Antiquarian Behind the Old English Medical Texts
Anne Van Arsdall and M.K.C. MacMahon