Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture Read online

  The New Middle Ages

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  Bonnie WheelerEng & Medieval Studies, 239 Dallas Hall, Southern Methodist Univ, Dallas, Texas, USA

  The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

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  Virginia Langum

  Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and Culture

  Virginia LangumUmeå University, Umeå, Sweden

  ISBN 978-1-137-46558-0e-ISBN 978-1-137-44990-0

  DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44990-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941862

  © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

  The New Middle Ages

  MEDICINE AND THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS IN LATE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND CULTURE Copyright © Virginia Langum, 2016. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission. In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN The author has asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One New York Plaza, Suite 4500 New York, NY 10004-1562. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Hardback ISBN: 978-1-137-46558-0 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-349-69086-2 E-PUB ISBN: 978-1-137-44990-0 E-PDF ISBN: XXX-X-XXX-XXXXX-X DOI: XXXXXXXXXXX Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by Palgrave Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library

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  Acknowledgments

  I began this project after taking up a postdoctoral fellowship at Umeå University. The long, dark winters in northern Sweden proved conducive for contemplating weaknesses of spirit and body. However, the support was warm from the Umeå Group for Premodern Studies, particularly Jonas Carlquist, Elise Dermineur, Anna Foka, and Godelinde Perk as well as the members of the literary seminar at the Department of Language Studies. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond provided a further position that allowed me to develop this project into a book at the beautiful and tranquil Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study at Uppsala University. I am most grateful to the staff and fellows there, particularly the director Björn Wittrock. Over the years and in various countries, I have benefited greatly from sharing texts, conversation, and laughter with my friends and colleagues Katie Walter and Julie Orlemanski. My friend Louise Woods and my father David Langum carefully read the text from start to finish. Finally, for their reading, support, and humor, gratitude is also due to Ella and Mikael Holmberg, Kirk P.H. Sullivan, Asbjörg Westum, and Staffan I. Lindberg.

  Uppsala, Sweden

  Virginia Langum

  Contents

  1 Introduction

  Concepts and Terms

  Medieval

  Medicine

  The Seven Deadly Sins

  Literature and Culture

  Outline

  2 Medicine, Sin, and Language

  Medicine as Metaphor

  Medicine as Metonymy

  Medicine as Material

  Metaphor as Medicine

  3 Pride

  Metaphorical Pride

  Metonymic Pride

  Material Pride

  4 Envy

  Metaphorical Envy

  Metonymic Envy

  Material Envy

  5 Wrath

  Metaphorical Wrath

  Metonymic Wrath

  Material Wrath

  6 Avarice

  Metaphorical Avarice

  Metonymic Avarice

  Material Avarice

  7 Sloth

  Metaphorical Sloth

  Metonymic Sloth

  Material Sloth

  8 Gluttony

  Metaphorical Gluttony

  Metonymic Gluttony

  Material Gluttony

  9 Lechery

  Metaphorical Lechery

  Metonymic Lechery

  Material Lechery

  10 Conclusion

  Bibliography

  Index

  © The Author(s) 2016

  Virginia LangumMedicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and CultureThe New Middle Ages10.1057/978-1-137-44990-0_1

  1. Introduction

  Virginia Langum1

  (1)Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

  Medicine and sin might seem unlikely bedfellows, but they are persistently entwined in history. 1 Their relationship can be viewed as a medicalized morality whereby traditionally moral characteristics and behaviors are attributed to medical conditions. Alternatively, it can be considered a moralized medicine whereby certain diseases and conditions are loaded with moral freight.

  Scholars often identify the origins of medicalized morality in the nineteenth century with the rise of psychiatry and the shift in responsibility over certain undesirable behaviors, such as alcohol consumption and deviant sexual activities, from church authorities to the field of medicine. 2 These newly pathologized categories typically followed the established norms of religion and society. In this sense, medicalized morality represented merely a shift in semantic domain or language: behavior and dispositions formerly described as virtuous or vicious might be newly accounted normal or pathological. Medicine provided new support for established ideas of good and bad behavior. Indeed, “modern science has proved just as ideologically malleable as the Bible when it comes to arguing either for or against such divisions.” 3

  Moralized medicine occurs either explicitly, in the affiliation of certain behaviors and risk factors with specific diseases, or more implicitly, through metaphor and other types of figurative
language. Studies of the figurative language attributed to diseases; for example, cancer, leprosy, and AIDS, argue that “nothing is more punitive than to give a disease meaning—that meaning being invariably a moralistic one.” 4 Other inquiries highlight the use of metaphors in science as vehicles for shaping social and moral values, including work on the use of religious imagery and symbols such as the “book of life” in genetics. 5

  The intersection of health and ethics extends beyond verbal signifiers to other fundamental conceptual frameworks, such as the nature versus nurture debate. The question of how much control we wield over our environment and ourselves is current in arenas beyond the political and academic. The recent upsurge in depictions of zombies and vampires in films, novels, and television arguably reflects such concerns. The viruses that generate these plots may intimate a perceived vulnerability in the metaphorical body politic as well as the material threat of epidemics to individual bodies. Zombies and vampires represent extreme organic needs that are both biologically driven and beyond the desires of healthy humans. 6 Yet these popular cultural phenomena offer insight into what we might call the “bio-disaster” trend, with origins traceable to historical pandemics. 7 For example, analogues with the greedy, unthinking zombie have been located in the early modern plague literature in response to the rise of capitalism. 8

  The appropriation of moral behavior and dispositions by medicine is not only a contemporary phenomenon, however. Across many cultures and periods, problematic, abnormal, or diseased bodies represented social anxieties and moral failings. 9 Although ancient in origin, images of a “body politic” whose diseases or disjointedness embody social problems that threaten the unity and functioning of the state have been used by thinkers throughout history, accompanied by notions of the human body as a microcosm. 10

  This book investigates the medieval understanding of the interaction of medicine and morality, shaped by both the medical imagery used in religious and literary contexts as well as by the discussion of behavior and religious language in medical contexts. The study primarily concerns the period between the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), a significant event for pastoral reform and the textual production of works about confession and the sins, and the eve of the Protestant Reformation. The Lateran-inspired confessional literature places great emphasis upon the circumstances of sin—priests were required to know the particulars of both sins and sinners, including some knowledge of physiological predispositions and the passions. 11 At the same time, medical materials such as physiognomies, encyclopedias, surgical manuals, and recipe books were being circulated and translated into the vernacular on a much wider scale. England is a particularly interesting case, where the majority of university-trained physicians were in holy orders up to the late fifteenth century, and clergy generally undertook the translation of Latin medical texts into English.

  The year 1500 also marks something of a shift in the period’s religious and medical mentality. Religious texts increasingly evinced a preference for the Ten Commandments over the sins on the basis of the former’s scriptural authority. Professional medical guilds took shape—albeit quite late in England compared with the continent. 12 In terms of changes in anatomical and physiological knowledge, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, thinkers began to significantly challenge the teachings of the ancient physician Galen (d. c. 210). The early modern physician Paracelsus (d. 1541) allegedly burned Galen’s books, and while less radical in the short term, Vesalius’ (d. 1564) human dissections had a more devastating influence on the tradition of Galenic medicine in the long term. Due to these and other movements, medicine lost something of its “homogeneity.” 13

  On the other hand, the years 1215 and 1500 are porous bookends as will become clearer. The reforms of 1215 began before 1215; as, of course, did the translation and circulation of texts. Proto-Protestant movements that emphasized a return to scripture and literalism existed before 1500. 14 And while the shift to the Ten Commandments pre-dated the Reformation in learned and orthodox theological texts, certainly the sins do not disappear. 15 , 16 As for medical changes, the influence of Galenism did not really die out until the nineteenth century. 17

  However, we can make some general observations about the interaction of religion and medicine in the later Middle Ages. Depictions of the vices in the later medieval period are more detailed and naturalistic than the earlier static allegorical representations, as remarked upon by literary and art historians. 18 This material often includes medical imagery, ranging in its allegorical quality, specificity, and vividness. 19 Although the Fourth Lateran Council explicitly prohibited clergy from practicing incision (i.e., the cutting of the body) and cauterization (i.e., the burning and sealing of wounds), priests undoubtedly practiced various forms of medicine in this period. 20 Beyond practice and regulation, clerics were involved in the transmission of its knowledge, as they translated and copied medical texts for charitable and compassionate reasons. 21 Such clerical translation was part of the larger phenomenon of the translation of technical texts into vernacular languages in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This vernacularization facilitated the “popular consumption” of specialized knowledge. 22 Despite uncertainty surrounding the ownership, audience, and use of these texts, we may infer a widespread familiarity with surgical and medical practice. 23

  Concepts and Terms

  Before delving into the primary material, it is worth exploring several viscous concepts and terms at the core of this book and in its title: medicine, the seven deadly sins, medieval, culture, and literature. The history of ideas and the more recent history of emotions offer several useful approaches to thinking about concepts in the past. As a branch of the history of ideas, conceptual history examines the development of thoughts and ideas by studying their linguistic and cultural contexts. Many potential problems in the study of medicine and religion in the Middle Ages arise from the assumption of equivalence: the suggestion either that a concept used in the Middle Ages means the same in our own age or that a word used in one medieval text means the same in another medieval text. The word “contagion” exemplifies the first type of false equivalence. In the twenty-first century, the use of this word implies knowledge of microbiology; in the fourteenth century, it did not, as will become clear in the discussion of plague. 24

  The second type of false equivalence entails disregard for the multiplicity of meanings within medieval texts. For example, the word “vice” might conflate with “sin” in religious contexts, yet the same word might denote harmful treatments or bodily conditions in medical contexts. Given the crossover between the fields of medicine and religion, as outlined in more detail later, I tend to take a generous view of polysemy, or the multiplicity of meanings of words and phrases. However, some caution is required.

  The study of the history of emotions also probes expressions and vocabularies. Viewing the body as a subject of historical analysis rather than a vehicle of timeless experience, historians of the emotions inquire into the extent to which emotions are shaped by societies, ideologies, and thoughts, as well as how lived experience can be distinguished from prescribed experience in texts. Given the pervasive view of the Middle Ages as barbarous and uncivilized, it is unsurprising that several medieval historians have taken up this field as a means of re-examining and revising the emotional landscape of the period. 25 Barbara Rosenwein, for example, has elucidated some of the methodological considerations involved in studying thoughts and feelings. She proposes the concept of an “emotional community” as a way of recovering the historically saturated meaning of emotion. To study the emotional community, she recommends compiling a varied bank of sources, to isolate commonalities and differences, and paying critical attention to terms denoting emotions in these sources, particularly those deceptively similar to modern terms. She also suggests utilizing contemporary theories of emotions where available, and recognizing the role of metaphors, irony, and silence within sources, and how their meanings change over time. 26 Sever
al articles, monographs, and collections have taken up Rosenwein’s approach to premodern emotions, some specifically situating the history of emotions within the history of medicine and medical discourse. 27 As emotions are closely connected to sin, an examination of medicine and sin necessarily acknowledges and converges with the history of emotions and the history of medicine. Aquinas, for example, maintained that the passions could influence or move the will, and that the will is the proximate cause of virtuous or vicious action. 28 Therefore, medieval theories on the passions are integral to this book.

  Although many excellent studies exist on individual passions and sins in relation to their medical context, this book attempts to offer a study of the entire heptad. 29 Furthermore, it does so not only through learned theology and poetry but primarily through pastoral literature—the simple manuals designed to impart basic matters of faith—and sermons. As part of their duties, priests were required to instruct the faithful about the seven deadly sins, which they did both in confession and in their preaching. 30 Thus, sermons and pastoral literature offer excellent testament to the wide circulation of medical knowledge in relation to the sins in the Middle Ages. Inspired by methodologies in history of ideas and emotions, the study considers the relationship between medicine and sin, the body and ethics, through close attention to their linguistic contexts. Questions of language, interpretation, and metaphor are treated in the next chapter at some length. Although the multiple meanings of particular concepts are dealt with as they arise in the progress of the book, foundational concepts such as those in the title are treated here.