Healers and healing in early modern Italy

Abstract

Rather than present a conventional medical history, the book focuses on the medical pluralism present in this Catholic society. By adopting the point of view of the sick people themselves, religious and popular ideas about disease and its causation and cure can be considered alongside learned ones. The emphasis is on the interaction and, indeed, competition between these three overlapping spheres. The training, preparation and practice of all healers is discussed against a backdrop of ongoing attempts by the medical and ecclesiastical elites to limit their activities within bounds considered acceptable. Gentilcore carefully pieces together medical and demonological treatises, canonisation processes, trials for magic and simulated sanctity, books of 'secrets', hospital records, guild statutes, and the documents of the kingdom's medical magistracy, the Protomedicato. As a result, Healers and healing in early modern Italy is able to chart rich new territory in the social and cultural history of early modern Europe.

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