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Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The "Viaticum" and Its Commentaries
According to medieval physicians, lovesickness was an illness of mind and body caused by sexual desire and the sight of beauty. The notorious agony of an unhappy lover was treated as an ailment closely related to melancholia and potentially fatal if not treated.
In Lovesickness in the Middle Ages, Mary F. Wack uses newly discovered texts and takes a fresh look at primary sources to offer the first comprehensive analysis of the forms and meanings of the lover's malady in medieval culture. She examines its importance in medieval literature and its role in the transformation of courtly love from literary convention to social practice. Drawing extensively from the Viaticum and its commentaries, studied for centuries in medical schools, Wack also addresses wider questions about the cultural construction of illness, the conflict between medicine and Church morality, the relations between lovesickness and gender, and the lover's malady as a form of behavior in late medieval society.
The second part of the book contains annotated editions and translations of six important texts on lovesickness--the Viaticum and four commentaries on it. Forty-six black-and-white illustrations provide a striking visual perspective on medieval love and medicine.
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages will interest literary scholars and students as well as historians of medicine, sexuality, psychology, and women's studies.
In Lovesickness in the Middle Ages, Mary F. Wack uses newly discovered texts and takes a fresh look at primary sources to offer the first comprehensive analysis of the forms and meanings of the lover's malady in medieval culture. She examines its importance in medieval literature and its role in the transformation of courtly love from literary convention to social practice. Drawing extensively from the Viaticum and its commentaries, studied for centuries in medical schools, Wack also addresses wider questions about the cultural construction of illness, the conflict between medicine and Church morality, the relations between lovesickness and gender, and the lover's malady as a form of behavior in late medieval society.
The second part of the book contains annotated editions and translations of six important texts on lovesickness--the Viaticum and four commentaries on it. Forty-six black-and-white illustrations provide a striking visual perspective on medieval love and medicine.
Lovesickness in the Middle Ages will interest literary scholars and students as well as historians of medicine, sexuality, psychology, and women's studies.
Hardcover
Published January 29, 1990
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November 10, 2023Didn't manage to finish it but am hoping to return one day! A scholarly but very readable study of medical discourse around love as disease, from Galen & Hippocrates through the Arabs through the European Middle Ages. She writes well about the interplay between medical discourse, literature, and actual social practices (like the development of the "courtly love" tradition and what medicalization of love had to do with it). She also talks quite a lot about gender and class differences in the experience of the "the loveres maladye of hereos" and how the susceptible population changed from one historical context to another.
Who could resist with passages like these?
"Wine," Rufus says, "is a strong medication for the sad, the timid, and erotic lovers".... Again, Rufus says: "Not only wine, temperately drunk, relieves sadness, but indeed other similar things, like a temperate bath." Thus it happens that when certain people enter a bath they are moved to sing.
In Bona Fortuna's opinion, there are four universal cures for lovesickness: travel, litigation, business, and intercourse with other women, whose efficacy he attests by appeals to his own experience in practice. To illustrate the point that change of scenery is a universal cure for lovesickness, he relates the case of a young man whom he caused, with the consent of the young man's relatives, to be charged with homicide. The man was forced to flee the country, and so was cured of lovesickness by separation from the object of his desire.
Who could resist with passages like these?
"Wine," Rufus says, "is a strong medication for the sad, the timid, and erotic lovers".... Again, Rufus says: "Not only wine, temperately drunk, relieves sadness, but indeed other similar things, like a temperate bath." Thus it happens that when certain people enter a bath they are moved to sing.
In Bona Fortuna's opinion, there are four universal cures for lovesickness: travel, litigation, business, and intercourse with other women, whose efficacy he attests by appeals to his own experience in practice. To illustrate the point that change of scenery is a universal cure for lovesickness, he relates the case of a young man whom he caused, with the consent of the young man's relatives, to be charged with homicide. The man was forced to flee the country, and so was cured of lovesickness by separation from the object of his desire.
Displaying 1 of 1 review