| 'Salvation is Medicine': Gender and the Caregiving Communities of Late Medieval Europe
Preparation of a book on medieval women’s medical knowledge and religion-based caregiving practices.
This project examines the healthcare practices and health knowledge circulating in women's caregiving communities in 13th-century northern France, Brabant, and Flanders. Beguines and Cistercian nuns in this region maintained hospices, leprosaria, and monastic infirmaries that were central to the daily care of the sick and dying. Harnessing fragmentary evidence from archival sources, cartularies, hagiographic narratives, and liturgical and devotional manuscripts, it reveals a heretofore unrecognized constellation of feminine knowledge production about the body, health, and dying in late medieval Europe. By contextualizing these fragments within religious women's institutional circuits of care, I argue for the medical signification of late medieval caregiving practices and theories of salvation.
[Grant products][Media coverage]
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Project fields:
History of Religion; Medieval History; Women's History
Program:
Fellowships
Division:
Research Programs
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Totals:
$60,000 (approved)
$60,000 (awarded)
Grant period:
1/1/2019 – 12/31/2019
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