Binding Passions by Ruggiero Guido; & Guido Ruggiero

Author:Ruggiero, Guido; & Guido Ruggiero
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0195079302
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2015-03-14T10:11:03+00:00

Women Priests as Healers

In Apollonia’s testimony before the Holy Office, beyond the immediate concern with her escape, questions focused on three areas: love magic, magic used to find lost things, and magic used to heal. While all three were quite prevalent in Venice, in Latisana women were more willing to admit the first and the last, and seemed less interested in or aware of the use of magic to find what had been lost or stolen (perhaps because in the more personal setting of a small town, things as well as people tended to be kept track of by neighbors and family). Apollonia, as noted earlier, seemed most willing to discuss her medical practices. In this she was similar to many of the other women of Latisana questioned. Women’s illnesses were a particular emphasis of their curing, as were childhood ailments. It seems, however, that women were perceived as having a more intimate and immediate relationship with the body across the board; thus, they had the ability to heal most of its ills. Their medicine might appear at first sight to be a rather strange mix of religion, folk cures, and sympathetic magic, but once again we must be careful not to underestimate its intellectual range, its ability to heal, or its poetry. Crucially in the context of the late Renaissance, this syncretism touched many of the bases that promised power over the body and, ultimately, health.

Both the range of the illnesses treated by women in Latisana and the focus of that treatment are significant. Beyond Apollonia’s treatment of problems of the stomach and the womb, we find women there treating fever, headaches, measles, sun stroke, bleeding wounds, bloody noses, broken bones, various skin diseases, and diseases whose symptoms made them appear to be skin diseases, as well as gout, persistent coughs, worms of various types, eye problems, epilepsy, depression and melancholy, a range of wasting and digestive diseases that affected babies and young children, and, of course, those who had been fatturato, or bewitched (the ever-present catchall diagnosis when others seemed inadequate).

Most prevalent in this wide range of rural ailments were childhood diseases, which, with their seemingly rapid weakening and wasting away of a child, could easily be interpreted as something more than a simple illness. Ailments of the womb—a catchall category for numerous problems that affected women—were also very common, although the Holy Office was less interested in these cures, perhaps because they seemed less likely to involve witchcraft or perhaps because mature women and their ailments were seen as less significant. Skin diseases and headaches were also, not surprisingly, very prevalent. Syphilis, seldom referred to in Latisana, probably lay hidden behind some of the eruptions and rashes that seemed endemic there. Broken bones, bleeding wounds, and simple bloody noses were also common, reflecting the physical nature of rural work and the prevalence of everyday violence in the countryside.

More surprising perhaps were the significant number of cases involving depression. Some of these may have actually been the final

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.