Medieval Medicine at Maynooth!

Wednesday, November 2, 2022 - 10:30

On 16 September 2022, Dr Siobhán Barrett organised a one-day workshop on medieval medicine as part of her Irish Research Council funded postdoctoral project ‘A Triad of Medical Glossaries’. This blended online and in person event brought researchers from Ireland, Canada, Wales, Scotland and England together to present their current work. The papers reflected the wide range of scholarship that is happening now in the area of medieval medicine and stimulated much discussion, including several suggestions for future collaborations.

The first session included presentations from three researchers in the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth: Professor David Stifter, Dr Deborah Hayden and PhD student Emer Kavanagh, all of whom spoke about aspects of healing charms in Irish tradition and their analogues in Old English and Welsh texts. Dr Diana Luft then spoke on ‘Medieval Welsh Recipes in Early Modern Manuscripts’, while Dr Sharon Arbuthnot shared her current work on the compilation of a dictionary of medieval Gaelic medical terminology. Dr Christina Lee (University of Nottingham) concluded the second session with a thought-provoking paper on ‘What is Health? Responses to Sickness from Different Perspectives’, which challenged us to consider different concepts of health and how bioarchaeology may lead to a new understanding about medieval societal attitudes towards illness, care and health.

In the final session of the day, Dr Ranke deVries (St. Francis Xavier University) joined us remotely to discuss her current project ‘Medicine in Medieval Irish Saga Texts – the MMIST project’. One aspect of her research is the use of colour in descriptions of characters in sagas and how this might be interpreted in the light of humoural theory. Dr Siobhán Barrett then delivered a paper on medical references in the Poems of Blathmac, arguing that the recitation of the poems may have had a healing effect in itself.

Staff and postgraduates from the Early Irish department joined in the stimulating discussions that followed the papers. The event concluded with a tour of the spectacular Russell Library, where we were saw some of our library treasures.

 

Professor David Stifter delivers his paper on ‘Reading Medieval Irish Charms as Poetic Compositions’ for the Medieval Medicine Workshop