Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Abstract

Angela Montford, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Pp. 318. £57.50 (hbk). ISBN 0–7546–3697–6. Montford's desire to explore the relationship between illness and the mendicant orders has resulted in a fascinating study of medical codes and practices associated, in particular, with the Dominican and Franciscan convents at Bologna. Drawing on the idea that: ‘health, sickness and medicine and the demands of the physical body were matters affecting many aspects of the daily life and conduct of … convents’, she charts the orders' changing attitudes to such matters as the role of the frater medicus and the need to strike a balance between asceticism and the provision of a regime that prioritized the health of the individual friar and that of the community (p. 257). Her examination of what may be characterized as the idealized development of the friars makes considerable use of the works of the influential Dominican Master General Humbert of Romans, and the orders' rules and regulations, including modifications introduced through the acta. As a result, and given the extremely limited survival of manuscript sources produced by individual friaries, these ideas on how convents should regulate the activities of their members to try to ensure a healthy and well-disciplined community are primarily considered in the light of the findings relating to a few north Italian houses. Yet the richness of the accounts of S. Domenico, Bologna, when used in conjunction with comparative material, produces valuable insights concerning the maintenance of this house and the lives of friars more generally.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 95 citations exist upstream.