Saintly systems of healing: images, devotion and cures

Abstract

Jacques Le Goff notes that in the Middle Ages the body did not exist in itself but was always co-penetrated with the soul. The experiences of illness and therapeutic regimes, involving prayer, imagery, magico-religious regimens or practices as well as medico-surgical ones should therefore be considered symbiotically as overlapping, although sometimes competing, systems. The relationship between sanctity, healing, and images in the late Middle Ages was complex.