The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England - (Health and Healing in the Middle Ages) by Peter Murray Jones (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Drawing upon a surprising wealth of evidence found in surviving manuscripts, this book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care.

Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late medieval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are the people we think of immediately as agents of healing; whilst we identify university teachers as authorities on medical writings. Yet from their first appearance in England in the 1220s to the dispersal of the friaries in the 1530s, four orders of friars were active as healers of every type. Their care extended beyond the circle of their own brethren: patients included royalty, nobles and bishops, and they also provided charitable aid and relief to the poor. They wrote about medicine too. Bartholomew the Englishman and Roger Bacon were arguably the most influential authors, alongside the Dominican Henry Daniel. Nor should we forget the anonymous Franciscan compilers of the Tabula medicine, a handbook of cures, which, amongst other items, contains case histories of friars practising medicine. Even after the Reformation, these texts continued to circulate and find new readers amongst practitioners and householders.

This book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms. Drawing upon the surprising wealth of evidence found in the surviving manuscripts, it brings to light individuals such as William Holme (c. 1400), and his patient the duke of York (d. 1402), who suffered from swollen legs. Holme also wrote about medicinal simples and gave instructions for dealing with eye and voice problems experienced by his brother Franciscans. Friars from the thirteenth century onwards wrote their medicine differently, reflecting their religious vocation as preachers and confessors.

Review Quotes

Jones's work is an interdisciplinary tour de force. The combination of attention to detail, reach, and interdisciplinary adroitness makes Peter Murray Jones's book as necessary to the modern medievalist as the Tabula medicine was to the mendicant-physician. It is in every way a success.-- "JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, LITERATURE AND CULTURE"

The book makes a significant contribution to premodern medical history, but Jones still leaves room for more work by introducing new or overlooked manuscript evidence and historical figures. Jones's expansive archival work provides a model for how we can continue to revolutionize the field, as he has so compellingly done here.-- "MANUSCRIPT STUDIES: A JOURNAL OF THE SCHOENBERG INSTITUTE FOR MANUSCRIPT STUDIES"

This attractive volume is a veritable treasure trove. It draws together the different aspects of the friars' roles in acting as medical practitioners and traces those who compiled books of recommended cures. ... Murray-Jones is to be warmly commended for extracting so much information about the friars and their interest in the world of healing. His meticulous research highlights this hitherto under-researched aspect of mendicant history in medieval England. This is an impressive volume which unearths a great deal about the friars of the four principal orders and it will be warmly welcomed by students of mendicant history as well as medicine.-- "JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY"

This book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms.-- "STUDI MEDIEVALI"

Through his examination of medical manuscripts, Jones demonstrates that the English friars are an important aspect of medieval and early modern English medicine, even after the dissolution of the friaries. Historians of medieval medicine, as well as those interested in the Mendicant Orders, will certainly find this book a worthwhile read.-- "ISIS: A JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE SOCIETY"