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Introduction 23
Medical Practitioners in Medieval England (1965).52 Most of the records of
these practitioners are extracted from legal or administrative documents –
property transactions, wills, lawsuits, exchequer or chancellery records. Many
of the entries only record the existence of individuals identied as medicus or
leech, where the occupational category remains unresolved. ese biographical
entries contain the names of very few friars who practised medicine. is is
not surprising as friars are very seldom mentioned in property transactions or
lawsuits, the most common secular records.53 When individual friars do appear,
it is most often in ecclesiastical records, typically in ordination lists or licences
to preach or confess, or sometimes in university records. From the perspective of
such ecclesiastical records, medical considerations are irrelevant. Friars are thus
likely to be systematically under-represented in these biographical resources. So
of course are other sorts of medical practitioner – midwives, itinerant specialists
like tooth-drawers, herniotomists or eye-doctors, wise women and herbalists,
who are below the radar of institutional or legal records.
is is a prosopographical point then, about the counting of heads when it
comes to record-keeping in medieval England. e nature of the sources makes
a considerable dierence. But apart from prosopography, there is a further
issue about the relationship of medical practitioners to their patients. When
medical practitioners in medieval England are envisaged as options open to a
patient in search of help, they are usually presented in terms of a hierarchy of
resort. Usually, physicians are at the top of the hierarchy, as the most expensive
and long-educated kind of practitioner, then come surgeons, apothecaries,
and, below in the social scale, barbers and other specialists (usually classed
as empirics), and women practitioners.54 Note that this hierarchy of resort
has no space for friars or religious, nor is it clear how they would t in with
this essentially occupational approach to describing medical practitioners.
But attaching occupational labels to practitioners, while it makes sense of
documentary categories, is also problematic when it comes to considering
how medical practice worked. e practitioners we know best are those who
were writers or compilers. e manuscripts they produced tell us a lot about
52
Including the supplements to Talbot and Hammond, by S. Jenks, ‘Medizinische
Fachkräfte in England zur Zeit Heinrichs VI (1428/29–1460/61)’, Sudhos Archiv
69 (1985), 214–27; and F. M. Getz, ‘Archives and Sources: Medical Practitioners in
Medieval England’, Social History of Medicine 3 (1990), 245–83.
53
H. Kleineke, ‘e Records of the Common Law as a Source for the Medieval Med-
ical History of England’, Social History of Medicine 30 (2017), 483–99.
54
In the admirable work of Rawclie, Medicine & Society, there are chapters devoted
to e Physician, e Surgeon (subsuming barbers), and e Apothecary, as well as
a chapter on Women and Medicine: e Midwife and the Nurse.
24 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
how they practised, but also about their relations to their patients. In every
case of English practitioners of the fourteenth and fteenth century who
wrote (John Arderne, omas Fayreford, John Crophill, Richard Trewythian,
Nicholas Neesbett, John Clerk, John Argentein), we see the insuciency of the
occupational labels.55 In the cases of Crophill and Trewythian, their primary
activities were not medical at all (baili; money-lender and astrologer); in the
cases of the others, their interests and activities spread too wide to be conned
to a simple label. And, as we shall see, the friars who practised medicine do not
t into the occupational boxes any better. What we know about the practice of
medicine in late medieval England suggests a much more uid picture, with
no well-dened boundaries on practice or authorities to enforce them. Even
the attempt by physicians and surgeons in the 1420s to draw up regulations
for a supervised hierarchy of medical practice, with ocers drawn from those
judged to have fullled the professional requirements for physicians and elite
surgeons, rapidly fell apart even in the city of London, when faced with the
opposition of the Grocers and the Barbers companies and lack of interest on
the part of city authorities in enforcement.
56
Medical practitioners of all kinds can be imagined as options available to
patients looking for help within a form of medical marketplace – and this has
been a popular way of looking at things among early modern historians of
England. But a major drawback to this approach is that a medical marketplace
presupposes patients acting as consumers making choices about prices and
availability of medical care in their locality. is model is a better t for early
modern England or for the sophisticated city-states of late medieval Italy than
it is even for England’s largest city, London. David Gentilcore has argued that
in southern Italy patients did not have ready access to a variety of practitioners,
nor were the practitioners identied by occupational labels. In these respects,
most of late medieval England must have been more like southern Italy.57
Rob Ralley has made the point that what he calls medical economies, not
wholly dependent on competition, capture the relations of healers and
patients in late medieval England better than does the medical marketplace.
is alternative model allows space for charity when healing is oered free
55
See P. M. Jones, ‘Witnesses to Medieval Medical Practice in the Harley Collec-
tion’, Electronic British Library Journal, article 8 (2008), 1–13 (http://www.bl.uk/
eblj/2008articles/articles.html); M. B. Reynolds, ‘e Sururgia of Nicholas Nees-
bett: Writing Medical Authority in Later Medieval England’, Social History of
Medicine 35 (2022), 144–69; and articles on these named individuals in ODNB.
56
J. Colson and R. Ralley, ‘Medical Practice, Urban Politics and Patronage: the London
‘Commonality’ of Physicians and Surgeons of the 1420’s’, EHR 130 (2015), 1102–31.
57
See D. Gentilcore, Health and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester, 1998).
Introduction 25
of charge, and for an exchange of services between healer and patient, rather
than conning medical transactions to straightforward monetary purchase.
Medical economies also allow a role for institutions like hospitals and monastic
inrmaries, which sometimes oered medical care to the sick poor or inmates
who were professing religious. Since friars were generally – but not always –
unpaid for their medical services, they are more easily accommodated within
the medical economy model than in a medical marketplace model.
58
In the case of Franciscans, St Francis’s care for lepers and other sick poor
could inspire emulation on the part of his followers. Charitable care for the
sick in imitation of Christ and St Francis was undoubtedly embraced by
some friars as an avocation, a means of drawing nearer to God, particularly if
they had done some training in the sciences of healing before they took the
habit. In a manuscript in an Italian library written at the end of the thirteenth
century, apparently by a religious, the writer refers to himself as ‘I, a sinner,
but by the grace of God, a member of a religious order.’ His medical book is
written for the use of other religious so that they may give treatment to the
poor for nothing, since they are abandoned by the ordinary physicians and
surgeons. But when it comes to rich patients the manuscript supposes that
religious healers are to take fees. is applied to any religious order, not just
the Franciscans. e writer of this manuscript refers to a certain frater ‘R. de
Boemonte’, a Dominican friar, ‘who for a long time studied medicine.’59 Such
medical study would have been forbidden to Dominicans once professed, so
‘R. de Boemonte’ no doubt had studied medicine before he took the habit. We
will see in Chapter 1 that Dominicans as well as Franciscans with medical
expertise did in fact practise charitable healing of the poor.
Besides charitable care of the sick poor, the constitutions of the mendicant
order required friars to look after members of their own order, particularly
when they were outside the friary.60 Friar on friar medical care was one aspect
58
R. C. Ralley, ‘Medical Economies in Fifteenth-Century England’, in Medicine and
the Market in England and its Colonies, c. 1450-c. 1850, ed. M. S. R. Jenner and P.
Wallis (London, 2007), pp. 24–46.
59
Quoted by Talbot, Medicine, p. 96.
60
See for example the commentary on the Franciscan rule by David of Augsburg
(d. 1272): And if any of them, whether superior or inferior of whatever condition,
should fall into any illness, since care and concern in abundance should be tended
the sick, for the aicted cannot care for themselves; the other brothers, on whose
concern the sick rely, must, as their charge and by God’s command, serve them,
both in providing care and by covering costs, as they would wish to be served
themselves by others, if they themselves were sick; attentively and kindly and care-
fully lest harm aect them. e sick however, even in their sickness, have to recall
that they have professed voluntary poverty. For that reason they shall not press the
26 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
of the rule that friars should always travel in pairs. A travelling socius should
look after his sick brother as well as oer spiritual counsel and support. While
this kind of care is not instantiated in documentary records, it has left its trace
on the rst chronicle of the Franciscans in England by brother omas in
1257/8, which has many passages dealing with the illnesses of the brethren.61
Letters help to ll out the picture sketched by the chronicle of Brother omas.
e letters of the English Franciscan Adam Marsh (d.1259), rst Franciscan
lector in Oxford in 1242/3, friend and adviser of Robert Grosseteste, bishop
of Lincoln, make up the most detailed and revealing English letter collection
before the Paston letters in the fteenth century. Adam recommends
experienced healers in the Franciscan order who may be called on to give help
to their sick brethren and to eminent clerics and courtiers. We will come back
to Adam Marsh’s letters in Chapter 1.
e health of the friars
e picture we get of the health of English friars in Brother omas’s chronicle and in the letters of Adam Marsh suggests that friars were often liable to
illness, and that their superiors were preoccupied with keeping them healthy
despite the rigours of their vocation. Apart from this anecdotal evidence, we
do now have archaeological research on burials in friaries that throws interesting light on the health status of friars. One of the most recent and far-reaching
investigations of this kind focusses on friars and their contemporaries in Cambridge. All the main mendicant orders were represented by substantial friaries
in the town, because of its attraction as a centre of teaching and study. But only
in the case of the Augustinians, who occupied a site near the south boundary
of the city (now part of the New Museums site of the University), did the
brothers for services which go beyond the measure of their poverty, be it expensive
medication or such relief as the wealthy of this world who want to live here long are
accustomed to have. (Si quis eorum sive superior sive inferior qualibet conditione
in inrmitatem quamcumque ceciderit, cum omnis cura sit inrmis et pietas adhibenda quia aicta non valent sibimet subvenire, alii fratres ad quos cura spectat
inrmorum debent eis ocio suo ex mandato Dei servire tam in obsequiis quam
in expensis necessariis sicut vellent si et ipsi essent inrmi ab aliis sibi serviri, studiose et benigne et caute ne noxia eis concedant. Inrmi vero recognoscant etiam
in inrmitate sua paupertatem se esse voluntarios professos. Unde non ea importune a fratribus exigent quia paupertatis eorum excedant mensuram in pretiosis
medicinis vel aliis solatiis quae divites huius saeculi qui diu hic optant vivere solent
habere). Early Commentaries on the Rule of the Friars Minor, ed. D. Flood, 3 vols. (St
Bonaventure, 2014), I, p. 195; D. Flood, ‘Die Regeleklärung des Davids von Augsburg’, Franziskanische Studien 75 (1993), 201–42 (227, lines 160–8).
61
Jones, ‘Early Franciscans’.
Introduction 27
opportunity arise to undertake an archaeological investigation covering most
of the original site of their cloister, where there were seventy burials identied
as dating to between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.
An Augustinian friary had been established in Cambridge between 1277 and
1289 and continued until the dissolution in 1538. By 1297, there were thirty-six
friars in residence, and by 1326/8 their number had risen to seventy. As well
as functioning as a normal friary, it was also a national and international study
house, a studium generale for the Augustinian order, with young friars coming
to study for a few years. As well as the friars buried there with permission from
1290, the Augustinians also acquired the right to bury individuals who were not
members of the order in 1302. In 2016–17, the Cambridge Archaeological Unit
excavated part of the site, revealing two groups of burials.62 e earlier group of
thirty-two burials, dating from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries,
come from a cemetery located to the south of the friary church. e individuals
buried there were mainly male adults who were clothed when buried. e
presence of distinctive belt buckles argues for their being friars.63 Burials dating
to between the late fourteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries were made under
the oors of the friary chapter house or in the cloister walkway. In that area
were found the remains of Augustinian friars and some of their lay patrons.
Other archaeological work in Cambridge allowed the remains found at the
Augustinian friary to be compared with those of other groups associated with
the cemeteries of the Hospital of St John and various parishes outside and inside
the city.64 e ‘After the Plague’ project was able to bring to bear multidisciplinary
bioarchaeological approaches, including social osteology (eects of activity and
lifestyle evidence in the human skeleton); palaeopathology (revealing infectious,
congenital and metabolic illnesses, and trauma); ancient DNA of skeletons and
pathogens; isotopic investigations of diet and geographic origins; and studies of
dierences in bone architecture (caused by stress or diet).
Compared to contemporary burials of townspeople in the Hospital of St
John and other parish sites in and around Cambridge, the friars were taller
and their health status better in general. Because Cambridge was a studium
generale for the Augustinians, it is likely that many temporary denizens of
the friary had come to Cambridge from other places in England and Europe
62
C. Cessford and B. Neil, ‘e People of the Cambridge Austin Friars’, Archaeologi-
cal Journal 179 (2022), 383–444.
63
C. Cessford, A. Hall, B. Mulder, B. Neil, I. Riddler and J. Wiles, ‘Buried with their
Buckles On: Clothed Burial at the Augustinian Friary, Cambridge, and Corporate
and Individual Identity’, Medieval Archaeology 66 (2022), 151–87.
64
C. Cessford, ‘e St. John’s Hospital Cemetery and Environs, Cambridge: Contex-
tualizing the Medieval Urban Dead’, Archaeological Journal 172 (2015), 52–120.
28 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
to study in the schools. Yet the isotope evidence suggests that almost all the
Augustinians buried in the friary were of East Anglian origin. Burials on the
site were dierentiated archaeologically, as friars appear to have been buried
clothed and wearing a belt with buckle (as noted at excavation), whilst lay
people were typically buried wrapped in a shroud (with no belt buckle). e
townspeople buried in the friary likely represent some of the more prosperous
members of Cambridge society, as typically a donation was required for burial
within the friary. eir diet and general health seem to have been more like
that of the friars than that of the other Cambridge groups.
Comparable excavations at the site of the Augustinian friary in Hull
between 1994 and 1999 resulted in the detailed investigation of some 70%
of the main cloister area (including the church, and the east and west ranges).
is was not only the most extensive investigation of any of this order’s houses,
but also one of the larger excavations of any mendicant house in the UK. As
in Cambridge, human remains of friars and lay patrons (nearly 40% of all
burials) were found on site in the nave and chancel of the church, and in
the cloister, dating from 1316 to 1539. A minimum of 192 individuals were
buried there, a much larger number than those so far found in Cambridge.
One dierence from the burials at the Cambridge Augustinians is a cluster of
six burials at Hull showing evidence of probable or possible treponematosis,
whether caused by endemic or venereal syphilitic infections, or the disease of
yaws. Two of these people probably originated outside England. Hull, like
Cambridge, was a place where there was considerable international trac in
travellers, although in the case of Hull this was owing to its trading connexion
to the ports of the Baltic Sea, rather than to its attraction as a study centre.
65
In other respects, the investigations at Hull yield similar information
about the diet and health status of the friars to those at Cambridge. e
Hull friars enjoyed a rich diet including beef, veal and mutton (despite
proscription of meat and fasting) and in particular enjoyed very high levels
of consumption of eels and freshwater sh.66 e incidence of chronic
conditions signifying a compromised nutritional status in childhood, like
65
C. Roberts, A. Millard, G. Nowell, D. Gröcke, C. Macpherson, G. Pearson, and D.
Evans, ‘Isotopic Tracing of the Impact of Mobility on Infectious Disease: e Ori-
gin of People with Treponematosis Buried in Hull, England, in the Late Medieval
Period’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150 (2013), 273–85.
66
D. H. Evans, ‘Buried with the Friars’, in Written in Bones: How Human Remains
Unlock the Secrets of the Dead, ed. P. Bahn (Toronto, 2003), pp. 27–31; D. H. Evans,
‘Bring out Your Dead! Burial Rites and Ritual in a Medieval Monastic Cemetery’,
in Lübeck und der Hanseraum. Beiträge zu Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte. Festschrift
für Manfred Gläser, ed. A. Falk (Lübeck, 2014), pp. 285–300.
Introduction 29
cribra orbitalia (pitting in the bone on the roofs of the orbits of the skull,
suggestive of anaemia), and lesions caused when tooth enamel was being
formed, or signs of inammatory infections of the lower limbs, found for
instance in the Hospital of St John’s in Cambridge, was not as high among
the Augustinian friars of Hull and Cambridge. On the other hand, the older
Hull Augustinians did show a high incidence of degenerative joint disease
(DJD) and osteoarthritis. As high as 48% of the sample at Hull were aected
by DJD, and 15% by osteoarthritis.67 Gout, probably brought on by a rich
diet, seems to have aected the Cambridge Augustinians in the fourteenth
and fteenth centuries.68 e rate of hallux valgus (long-standing lateral
subluxation of the big toe, causing bunions) among the friars was almost
twice as high as the next highest group of burials in Cambridge, those in
the Hospital of St John. ere was also a strong correlation between hallux
valgus and fractures caused by falling. One friar had a coccyx fracture from
falling backwards as well as hallux valgus. Surprisingly, fashionable footwear
among the friars, specically pointed shoes with lengthy tips, seems to have
caused both hallux valgus and incidental fractures, particularly amongst
those who died at an advanced age.69 An equally surprising nding is that
friars were more liable to survivable traumatic fractures than others.70 e
overall impression is that the illnesses of friars in the fourteenth and fteenth
centuries were those of comparative auence, measured in terms of nutrition
and longer life expectancy, than the general population of Cambridge.
e most surprising contrast between the health of the friars and that
of those buried in other Cambridge cemeteries is that the friars had nearly
double the infection rate of parasites spread by poor hygiene, compared with
the general population. Prevalence of roundworm and whipworm found in
burials of the Augustinian friars was 58%, and in the All Saints by the Castle
67
R. Gilchrist and B. Sloane, Requiem: e Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain
(London, 2005), pp. 210–13. e results from the Augustinian friaries are in line
with those for other English late medieval friaries and monastic houses where bio-
archaeological investigations have been undertaken.
68
J. M. Dittmar, P. D. Mitchell, P. M. Jones, B. Mulder, S. A. Inskip, C. Cessford, and
J. E. Robb, ‘Gout and ‘Podagra’ in Medieval Cambridge, England’, International
Journal of Paleopathology 33 (2021), 170–181.
69
J. M. Dittmar, P. D. Mitchell, C. Cessford, S. A. Inskip, and J. E. Robb, ‘Fancy
Shoes and Painful Feet: Hallux valgus and Fracture Risk in Medieval Cambridge,
England’, International Journal of Paleopathology 35 (2021), 90–100.
70
J. M Dittmar, P. D. Mitchell, C. Cessford, S. A. Inskip, and J. E. Robb, ‘Medieval
Injuries: Skeletal Trauma as an Indicator of Past Living Conditions and Hazard
Risk in Cambridge, England’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 175 (2021),
626–45.
30 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
parishioners just 32%. is last rate of prevalence is broadly in line with
those in late medieval burial sites in England. Both these gures represent a
minimum prevalence, as it is likely that the actual number of infections was
higher due to destruction of eggs in the burial sediment by fungi and insects.
e explanation of the dierence between the Augustinians and the others
most likely lies in sanitary practice, though this is necessarily speculative. e
Augustinians might have manured the crops in their friary gardens with the
faeces from their own latrine block, and if the townspeople did not, then this
might have caused disproportionate reinfection in the Augustinians. Similarly,
if the Augustinians purchased manure from the town to fertilise their gardens
that contained human faeces or pig faeces (pigs can be infected by roundworm),
then this might have led to higher infection rates when they ate the crops
from their gardens. Medical texts available in medieval Cambridge show that
educated healers of the time were aware of intestinal worms of dierent shapes
and sizes and knew of medicines that they felt were helpful in treatment.
71
Many epidemic diseases must have aected the Augustinian friaries, but
the archaeological evidence is restricted to plague. e plague bacillus Yersinia
pestis was found in one burial in an early cemetery on the Cambridge site,
quite possible a victim of the rst great outbreak of 1348–50. ree other
plague victims were buried in the friary chapter house at some time between
c. 1450, when the chapter house was altered, and the dissolution in 1538. All
these burials were conducted as ceremoniously as non-plague burials, unlike
the six lay victims found in a mass burial nearby at St Bene’t’s Church.72 is
suggests that, as far as can be judged, deaths from epidemic disease were not
treated any dierently from any others.
* * *
e arc described by this book will move from the evidence for medical
practice by English friars, to their writings on medicine, to how friars were
seen in their role as confessors and healers, and nally to the legacy of their
writings for English medical culture after the dissolution of the friaries in
the 1530s. Chapter 1, ‘Friars practising medicine’, begins with the most
71
T. Wang, C. Cessford, J. M. Dittmar, S. Inskip, P. M. Jones and P. D. Mitchell, ‘In-
testinal Parasite Infection in the Augustinian friars and general population of me-
dieval Cambridge, UK’, International Journal of Paleopathology 39 (2022), 115–21.
72
C. Cessford, C. L. Scheib, M. Guellil, M. Keller, C. Alexander, S. A. Inskip and J.
E. Robb, ‘Beyond Plague Pits: Using Genetics to Identify Responses to Plague in
Medieval Cambridgeshire’, European Journal of Archaeology 24 (2021), 496–518.
Introduction 31
famous English friar practitioner of the Middle Ages, the surgeon William
Appleton. New evidence for his medical and surgical practice is found
in remedies attributed to him in the Tabula medicine, a collective work on
practical medicine by English Franciscans, dated to 1416–25. e Tabula
medicine is also our principal source for knowledge of other late medieval
friars and their patients. Pushing back earlier, there is evidence for medical
practice at court and among the English nobility and higher clergy by friars
of the thirteenth century. Two English Dominicans who were both confessors
and healers to their patients are studied in some detail, as their prescriptions
survive. As late as 1477, we nd a very unusual legal case from London when a
Franciscan Eryk de Vedica, and his convent superior, try to recover fees owing
to them for medical treatment of a lady, whose husband refused to pay. ere
is also surviving evidence scattered in manuscripts for other individual friars
practising medicine, and some of this is for friars from the Carmelite and
Augustinian orders.
Chapter 2, ‘William Holme, medicus’, makes a case study of a Franciscan of
the late fourteenth century, whose medical practice is the best attested in the
Tabula medicine. We know more about his patients, the illnesses they suered,
and the range of remedies used by Holme to treat them, than we do for other
friars. But the chapter also shows the connexion, or rather lack of it, between
medical practice and medical writing. William Holme compiled a Tractatus
de medicinis, incomplete and known to survive only in one manuscript by a
Franciscan amanuensis, which was probably intended as a useful medical
guide for friars in Holme’s own convent. He is best known as a compiler for
another text, his De simplicibus medicinis, which is a digest of twelve ‘doctors
of medicine’ on simple medicines, arranged alphabetically under illness
headings and then by the simples employed against each illness. Paradoxically,
perhaps, it turns out that there is not much to link William Holme as medical
practitioner with William Holme as medical author.
Chapter 3, ‘Writing medicine dierently’, moves the argument onwards
from the individual case of William Holme to more general considerations
about the kinds of medical writing associated with English friars. e principal
argument here is that friars did not write the same kinds of medical treatises as
university physicians and surgeons. e friars’ writings were more akin to their
religious writings, for example, sermons or moralising encyclopedias, than to
scholastic forms of medicine. Perhaps the friars picked up the anti-scholastic
bias so marked in the medical works of Roger Bacon. Collaboration on largescale projects to construct biblical concordances, tables of contents and indexes
was also characteristic of friars’ compilation practice, as was a preference for
alphabetical order to give rapid access to information. e Tabula medicine and
32 The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
the Liber uricrisiarum of the Dominican Henry Daniel both reect the friars’
creativity in devising new ways of representing practical medical knowledge.
Finally, the English friars were at the forefront of translating medical
knowledge from Latin into English, advancing this movement as a charitable
mission to lay householders.
Chapter 4, ‘e Medical Culture of Friars’ looks at the content rather than
the form of friars’ medicine. e kinds of medical knowledge that particularly
enthused English friars followed a programme rst established by Roger Bacon
in his writings addressed to Pope Clement in the 1260s. e friars did not
abandon the tenets of humoural medicine, or the use of degrees of hot, cold, wet
and dry in ranking medicaments, any more than Bacon did. But they showed
themselves as enthusiasts for three elements in the Baconian programme
in particular. ese were medicinal alchemy, scientia experimentalis with its
commitment to knowledge vouched for by experience, and philosophical
calendars and astrology. In each of these areas, English friars were innovators
in adapting these sciences for application to practical medicine. ere is one
other area of medical knowledge of special interest to friars but not an original
part of the Baconian programme. is is a focus on matters to do with women’s
medicine and human generation. ese are given a high prole in the Tabula
medicine and in Henry Daniel’s Liber uricrisiarum, testifying to the friars’
involvement in the intimate details of their patients’ lives.
Chapter 5, ‘Souls and Bodies’, explores the two domains in which friars
counselled laymen and other clergy, whether as religious or secular advisers.
e Lateran Council of 1215 wished the two domains to be kept strictly
separate, but this proved impossible. When it came to the care of souls, cura
animarum, the friars as preachers and teachers were keen to explore the role of
bodily complexion in its inuence over the virtues and vices. In counselling the
penitent layman, the friar was aware of the importance of diagnosing sin and
prescribing penances to restore spiritual health. In works of spiritual counsel
directed at lay readers, friars outlined a regimen for the soul. Conversely, friars
were also much involved in giving their lay patients advice on maintaining
bodily health, in the form of the regimen sanitatis (rule of health). ese
regimina often formed part of larger works like encyclopedias and the Tabula
medicine handbook. A theoretical overlap between the domains of the soul and
of the body was to be found in the signicance of complexion for both, and
in the embedding of ‘accidents of the soul’ among the six non-natural factors,
which it is the task of the healer and his patient to control.
Chapter 6, ‘Creeping into Homes’, introduces a dierent perspective, that
of the critics and opponents of the friars in England. ere had been attempts
even in the early days to roll back the growing power of the mendicant orders,