Book Series Knowledge, Scholarship, and Science in the Middle Ages, vol. 5

Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World

Vernacular Texts and Traditions

Deborah Hayden, Sarah Baccianti (eds)

  • Pages: approx. 496 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:1 b/w, 17 col., 11 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2025


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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-61333-8
  • Hardback
  • Forthcoming (Aug/25)
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Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World, ca. 700-1500

BIO

Sarah Baccianti is the Research Manager at National Museums NI. Before moving to the museum sector, she lectured in Old English and Old Norse literature at the University of Oxford, Université de Lausanne, University College Cork and Queen’s University Belfast. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Oxford where she researched the narrative structure of chronicles and historiae written in Old Norse, Old English, and Anglo-Latin. Her latest project – which was funded by a British Academy Newton International Fellowship, and that she continues to research in her spare time – focuses on the reception and transmission of scientific and medical knowledge in medieval Denmark and Iceland.

Deborah Hayden is Professor in Medieval Irish and Celtic Studies at Maynooth University. She has published and taught widely on aspects of the intellectual and literary culture of medieval Ireland and the Insular world in its European context, and has particular interests in the history of linguistic thought and education and classical and medieval tradition, premodern Irish medical writing, early Irish lexicography, medieval Irish and Welsh legal tradition, and translation literature. She is Lead Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Language & History and Principal Investigator of the project LEIGHEAS: Language, Education and Medical Learning in the Premodern Gaelic World, funded by a Consolidator Laureate Award from the Irish Research Council (2022–2026).

Summary

Studies of medical learning in medieval England, Wales, Ireland, and Scandinavia have traditionally focused on each geographical region individually, with the North Atlantic perceived as a region largely peripheral to European culture. Such an approach, however, means that knowledge within this part of the world is never considered in the context of more global interactions, where scholars were in fact deeply engaged in wider intellectual currents concerning medicine and healing that stemmed from both continental Europe and the Middle East.

The chapters in this interdisciplinary collection draw together new research from historians, literary scholars, and linguists working on Norse, English, and Celtic material in order to bring fresh insights into the multilingual and cross-cultural nature of medical learning in northern Europe during the Middle Ages, c. 700-1600. They interrogate medical texts and ideas in both Latin and vernacular languages, addressing questions of translation, cultural and scientific inheritance, and exchange, and historical conceptions of health and the human being within nature. In doing so, this volume offers an in-depth study of the reception and transmission of medical knowledge that furthers our understanding both of scholarship in the medieval North Atlantic and across medieval Europe as a whole.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Cultural Crossroads and Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World
Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti

Part I. Materia Medica and Medical Knowledge

Humoral and Elemental Theory in Early Medieval English Medicine
Conan T. Doyle
Therapeutic Baths in Medieval English Medicine
Elisa Ramazzina
Body, baugr, and Sick-maintenance: The Germanic Context of Early Medieval Norwegian Law on Wounds
Anne-Irene Riisøy
Three ‘Exotic’ Brain Injuries in Medieval Irish Literature
Ranke de Vries
Early Irish Literature and the Embodied Mind
Victoriia Krivoshchekova
Menace or Medicine: What to Do with Nettles?
Erin Connelly and Christina Lee
Medical Knowledge in Two Middle English Manuscripts: Their Use and Users
Laura Poggesi
The Materia medica of the Gaelic Physician Tadhg Ó Cuinn (1415): At the Interface of Theory and Practice
Brigid Mayes 
The Role of Cathedrals in the Reception and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge in Medieval Scandinavia with a Focus on Medical Works
Christian Etheridge

Part II. Language And Lexicography

Celtic-Latin Medical Vocabulary 
Joseph J. Flahive
Late Medieval Irish Medicalese and its European Context
Sharon Arbuthnot
An Gilla Glas Ó Casaide and an Irish Version of Symoin Ianuensis’ Clavis sanitationis
Siobhán Barrett
Lexical Pairs in the Old West Norse Medical Manuscript Tradition
Matteo Tarsi
Knowing through Defining: Collections of Scientific Definitions in Gaelic Medical Manuscripts
Eystein Thanisch

Part III. Charms and Rituals

Harnessing the Monster: Principles of Similarity and Opposition in the Old English Medical Charms
Caroline Batten
Old Irish Healing Charms and Protective Spells
David Stifter
Premodern Irish Rituals for Conception and Childbirth in their Insular Context
Deborah Hayden
Conformity and Innovation in Premodern Welsh Medical Charms
Katherine Leach
Kveisustrengurinn: An Old Norse Charm
Sarah Baccianti

Manuscript Index
General Index