Books by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
Caring for the Living Soul identifies the fundamental role emotions played in the development of ... more Caring for the Living Soul identifies the fundamental role emotions played in the development of learned medicine and in the formation of the social role of the "physicians of the body" in the western Mediterranean between 1200 and 1500. The book explores theoretical debates and practical advice concerning the treatment of the "accidentia anime" in diverse medical sources. Contextualizing this literature within the developments in natural philosophy and pastoral theology during the period, and alongside local and social contexts of medical practice, emotions are revealed to have been a malleable topic through which change and innovation in the field of medicine transpired. Bringing together a wide range of untapped sources and creating connections between emotions, religious authorities, and medical practitioners, this study sheds light on the centrality of the discourses of emotions to the formation of the social fabric. Caring for the Living Soul converses with scholars of history of emotions, pre-modern medicine, and healthcare, opening new routes to consider the intellectual culture within the western Mediterranean setting.
Edited Volumes by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
Social History of Medicine 32:4, 2019
Pleasure in the Middle Ages N. Cohen Hanegbi, P. Nagy (eds.) XXIII+386 p., 10 b/w ill., 156 x 234... more Pleasure in the Middle Ages N. Cohen Hanegbi, P. Nagy (eds.) XXIII+386 p., 10 b/w ill., 156 x 234 mm, 2018 ISBN: 978-2-503-57520-9 Languages: English Hardback
Papers by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
Postmedieval, 2024
This article traces the roots of a metaphor that compares the aching womb to a forest or wild bea... more This article traces the roots of a metaphor that compares the aching womb to a forest or wild beast. A close examination of the metaphor, which appears in a chapter on uterine pains in Gilbert of England's Compendium medicinae, opens a window into ideas that circulated in twelfth-and thirteenthcentury Latin thought about human and animal maternal affection. After mapping out the medical tradition in which this singular metaphor appears, we turn to bestiaries, encyclopedias, literature, biblical commentaries, and sermons to situate this metaphor in a broader cultural context. By awakening the metaphor of the wild beast/womb, we identify a notion of embodied motherly love that circulated in medieval learned Latin Europe. These findings, in turn, shed new light on the role of animal-human discourse during the period, and reveal a compassionate approach to miscarriage and loss within medieval medicine.
Early Science and Medicine, 2024
Don Meir Alguades's Segulot Muvḥanyot, extant in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina MS 2474, offers a rar... more Don Meir Alguades's Segulot Muvḥanyot, extant in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina MS 2474, offers a rare insight into two converging questions in the history of late-medieval medical practice: how was practical knowledge transmitted? And to what extent did this practice draw on medical theory? The present article closely examines the various features of this collection-namely, the author to whom it was attributed, the text, the codex in which it was copied, and later renditions and mentions of the text. These reveal new information on the work, its formation and its reception, as well as on fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Jewish medical practice in Iberia and among Jews of Iberian descent. Considering this text as an exemplar of recorded clinical encounters allows us to advance tentative suggestions regarding the art of tailoring medical practice in the period, and the dynamics between medical theory and the medicine provided by learned physicians. The personalized recipes further demonstrate how the formulation of trust and credibility operated in Jewish medicine of the period, and how these survived through changing social contexts.
Journal of Medieval History , 2022
This essay traces the interconnected endeavours to forge civic health-care provisions and to Chri... more This essay traces the interconnected endeavours to forge civic health-care provisions and to Christianise the public sphere in late fourteenth-century Seville. Following waves of plague and civil unrest, and growing religious fervour, Seville of the period was building its civic structures anew. Within this process, the municipality and central religious figures in the city took initiatives to advance health care and public health. This essay demonstrates the breadth of measures invested in pursuing health in the city and their entanglement with the religious agenda. The individuals and institutions which sponsored and endorsed health care also advocated the ideal of a Christian community versed in the principles of the Christian faith. The unique case study of Seville’s closely-knit community of health-care promoters sheds light on the significant role of health care and the perception of health within Iberian religious culture of the period.
The Mediaeval Journal (TMJ), 2019
This article considers evidence of mental distress in relation to childbirth in late medieval Eu... more This article considers evidence of mental distress in relation to childbirth in late medieval Europe between the twelfth and early sixteenth centuries. It examines diverse sources written by physicians, clergy, and the laity in which women appear to suffer emotional instability in proximity to parturition. In lieu of arguing for antecedents of a modern recognized malady, the article retrieves the array of meanings attributed to incidents of postpartum mental instability in the pre-modern sources. It examines the relationship between physical pain and mental distress, the role of ritual in treatment, and the management of time in relation to postpartum mental anguish. It also contributes to a broader understanding of the dynamics between materiality and emotionality and the female body.
Abstract: The afterword highlights two main themes explored by Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-... more Abstract: The afterword highlights two main themes explored by Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-1550: women’s health and women’s roles in healthcare. In reviewing the evidence and main arguments of the studies included in the collection, the essay demonstrates that these two themes are interconnected. A case history of postpartum melancholy reported by Amato Lusitano, further exemplifies the value of the information gathered in the book for further research in the field. The afterword proposes several new routes for future research.
Social History of Medicine 32:4, 2019
The study of the medical practices of medieval European Jews has tended to centre on the dynamics... more The study of the medical practices of medieval European Jews has tended to centre on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of Jews in European societies, with medical practices and non-learned practitioners within Jewish communities receiving less attention. Information is particularly lacking on the more rudimentary aspects of medical training and practice, daily medical care and household medicine. This essay highlights features of the historiography of Jewish activity in medicine that beckon new or renewed scholarly attention. The essay introduces a cluster of articles, which begin to fill this lacuna while charting methodological keys for future work in the field.
The chapter explores narratives of sickness and illness; it further discusses concepts of health ... more The chapter explores narratives of sickness and illness; it further discusses concepts of health within a range of late medieval western European sources.
This essay surveys the origins of the term accidentia anime in Latin medical texts. The term appe... more This essay surveys the origins of the term accidentia anime in Latin medical texts. The term appears in the twelfth century as a category akin to emotions or passions, almost exclusively in medical sources. Its singular use points to the curious position of emotions in medicine. The essay claims that the term reflects the challenge medical authors and practitioners faced in dealing with emotions. A challenge stimulated by the complex nature of emotions, which, being of both soul and body, raised theoretical and ethical difficulties. Following translations from the Arabic of Greek sources and being heavily influenced by Aristotelian philosophy of the soul, physicians maintained the use of a peculiar term that identified sine voce the distinct meaning of emotions within medical care.
Theories of the soul and its faculties, including emotions, are recognized to have evolved signif... more Theories of the soul and its faculties, including emotions, are recognized to have evolved significantly from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. While these concepts were widely researched, they have been to a large extent isolated to their theoretical realm with little attention given to their practical application. This essay begins with a question asked by natural philosophers, theologians, and physicians throughout the thirteenth century: “Can the soul be moved by the body?” While the proposed answers to this question had substantial implications for understanding the nature of living creatures, I argue that they had very practical ramifications for formulating and treating emotions within medical practice.
The intra-religious dialogue of medieval converts from Judaism to Christianity is evident in the ... more The intra-religious dialogue of medieval converts from Judaism to Christianity is evident in the works of the fourteenth-century Sevillian physician Jean of Avignon (known in Hebrew as Moshe ben Shmuel of Roquemaure). Jean, a translator of Bernard of Gordon's Lilium medicine into Hebrew and the author of Sevillana medicina, was recurrently engaged in translating, transmitting, and debating religious notions and terms to his readers of both faiths. The medical arena in which this religious encounter took place, a common ground in many ways, enabled conveying and contemplating religious knowledge and practices. Sentiments of discord between faiths and societies alongside attempts to resolve such conflicts emerging in both of these works; the texts seem to evoke Jean's complex inner vicissitudes between the two worlds. This essay discusses the personal religious tension in Jean's works, granting significant attention to the special value of the medical context in serving as a terrain upon which the religious dialogue is worked through.
Jean of Avignon/ Juan de Aviñón
A medical consilium written by the physician Bartolomeo Montagnana (1380–1452) documents the medi... more A medical consilium written by the physician Bartolomeo Montagnana (1380–1452) documents the medical advice offered to his patient, Johannes of Milano.
Montagnana diagnosed Johannes’s ill health as the result of intense sorrow over his
daughter’s death. This case constitutes an exceptional source for the investigation of grief, mourning, health, and normativity in fifteenth-century Italy. This article traces some sources of influence and parallels to this case among contemporary
medical, literary, and religious writings that address the notions of unhealthy and sinful grief. Together with Bartolomeo Montagnana’s consilium, they demonstrate the role medicine and physicians assumed within the social and cultural construction of grief during this period.
Pain and the healing of pain are found at the basis of the two healing professions of the Middle ... more Pain and the healing of pain are found at the basis of the two healing professions of the Middle Ages: medicine, responsible for the preservation of the body from illness, and the clergy which claimed authority over the medicine of the soul and the healing of sins. Both disciplines were concerned with defining pain and understanding its role in the process of healing, not merely for theoretical purposes but for the sake of practice as well. In this essay I focus on the notion of pain (dolor) as an emotion, pain of the soul (dolor animi) and the pain of remorse (contrition) within both contexts. These forms of pain present a substantial methodological issue regarding the definition of pain and its nature since they are found on the periphery of the established definition of pain. In an attempt to contribute to our understanding of this rather large problem, ethe chapter provides a detailed case study of the terminology of emotional pain employed by physicians and confessors, its theoretical underpinnings and its use for assertion of professional authority.
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Books by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
Edited Volumes by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
Papers by Naama Cohen Hanegbi
Jean of Avignon/ Juan de Aviñón
Montagnana diagnosed Johannes’s ill health as the result of intense sorrow over his
daughter’s death. This case constitutes an exceptional source for the investigation of grief, mourning, health, and normativity in fifteenth-century Italy. This article traces some sources of influence and parallels to this case among contemporary
medical, literary, and religious writings that address the notions of unhealthy and sinful grief. Together with Bartolomeo Montagnana’s consilium, they demonstrate the role medicine and physicians assumed within the social and cultural construction of grief during this period.
Jean of Avignon/ Juan de Aviñón
Montagnana diagnosed Johannes’s ill health as the result of intense sorrow over his
daughter’s death. This case constitutes an exceptional source for the investigation of grief, mourning, health, and normativity in fifteenth-century Italy. This article traces some sources of influence and parallels to this case among contemporary
medical, literary, and religious writings that address the notions of unhealthy and sinful grief. Together with Bartolomeo Montagnana’s consilium, they demonstrate the role medicine and physicians assumed within the social and cultural construction of grief during this period.
Tuesday & Wednesday, 28 & 29 June 2022
University of Haifa, The Morris E. Curiel Institute for European Studies of Tel Aviv University, the CU Mediterranean Studies Group, and the Mediterranean Seminar.
Through the investigation of poems, pottery, personal letters, recipes and petitions, and through a breadth of topics running from street-cleaning, cooking and amulets to religious treatises and death rituals, this volume accords new meaning and value to the period and those who lived it. Its chapters confirm that the study of latrines, patterns of manuscript circulation, miracle narratives, sermons, skeletons, metaphors and so on, have as much to tell us about attitudes towards health and illness as do medical texts. Delving within and beyond texts, and focusing on the sensory, the experiential, the personal, the body and the spirit, this volume celebrates and critiques the diverse and complex cultural history of medieval health and medicine.
Volume 108, Number 2, Number 2, Spring 2022
The Catholic University of America Press