Abstract
In Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde when Troilus lies sick with love and fevers (‘the accesse’) during a dinner party at Deiphebus’s house, the noble guests, upon hearing of his illness, immediately begin to offer charms to cure him, while Criseyde sits quietly among them knowing, as readers do, that she herself is the best remedy for his malady.2 We see in Chaucer’s fictional social occasion one way in which charms circulated within late medieval society. The charm-knowers in Troy are aristocrats and the charms they would offer — for the fevers — they can evidently recite from memory.
And every wight gan waxen for accesse A leche anon, and seyde, ‘In this mannere Men curen folk.’ — ‘This charme I wol yow leere.’
Chaucer
Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at the Conference on Charms and Charming in Northern Europe, held at the Warburg Institute, London, 25 January 2003, and as the 2003 McLemore Lecture at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana, 18 March 2003.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Benson, L. D., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Bibliotheca sanctorum dall’ Istituto Giovanni XXIII della Pontificia Universita Lateranse, 13 vols, Roma: Istituto Giovanni XXIII della Pontificia Università Lateranense, 2000.
Bos, G., Ibn Al-Jazzar on Fevers, London and New York: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2000.
Bozoky, E., ‘Les moyens de la protection privée’, Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales (XIII e –XV es.), 8, 2001, pp. 175–91.
Bozoky, E., ‘Mythic Mediation in Healing Incantations’, in S. Campbell et al., eds, Health, Disease, and Healing in Medieval Culture, London, now Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, pp. 84–92.
Bynum, W. F., and V. Nutton, eds, Theories of Fever from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Medical History Supp. no. 1, London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1981.
Carroll, R., ‘The Middle English Recipe as a Text-Type’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100, 1999, pp. 27–42.
Carruthers, M., The Book of Memory: a Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, 1993.
De Nie, G., ‘Fatherly and Motherly Curing in Sixth-Century Gaul: Saint Radegund’s Mysterium’, in Anne-Marie Korte, ed., Women and Miracle Stories, Leiden, Boston, Cologne: Brill, 2001, pp. 53–86.
Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.
Elliott, J. K., The Apocryphal New Testament: a Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Elsakkers, M., ‘In Pain You Shall Bear Children (Gen. 3:16): Medieval Prayers for a Safe Delivery’, in A.-M. Korte, ed., Women and Miracle Stories: a Multidisciplinary Exploration, Leiden, Boston and Cologne: Brill, 2001, pp. 179–209.
Foley, J. M., Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Forbes, Thomas Rogers, The Midwife and the Witch, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966.
Gilbertus Anglicus, Compendia medicinae, Lyons, 1510.
Good, B. J., Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: an Anthropological Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Gray, D., ‘The Five Wounds of Our Lord’, Notes and Queries 208, 1963, pp. 50–1, 82–9, 127–34 and 163–8.
Green, M., ‘Masses in Remembrance of “Seynt Susanne”: a Fifteenth-Century Spiritual Regimen’, Notes and Queries n.s. 50 (4), 2003, pp. 380–4.
Hanson, A. E., ‘A Long-lived “quick-birther” (okytokion)’, in Véronique Dasen, ed., Naissance et petite enfance dans l’Antiquité, Actes du colloque de Fribourg, 28 novembre-ler décembre 2001, Fribourg-Göttingen: Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, forthcoming 2004.
Heinrich, F., Ein mittelenglisches Medizinbuch, Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1896.
Holthausen, F., ‘Medicinische Gedichte aus einer Stockholmer Handschrift’, Anglia 18 (1896), pp. 293–331.
Horstmann, C., ed., Three Kings of Cologne: an Early English Translation of the Historia Trium Regum by John of Hildesheim, EETS o.s. 85 Rpt, Millwood, New York: Kraus Reprints, 1988.
Hunt, T., Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-century England, Introduction and Texts, Cambridge: Brewer, 1990.
Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea, ed. G. P. Maggioni, 2 vols, Tavarnuzze: SISMEL-Edizione del Galluzzo, 1998 (cited as Legenda aurea).
Jones, C. ‘“Efficacy Phrases” in Medieval English Medical Manuscripts’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99, 1998, pp. 199–210.
Jones, P. M., ‘Harley MS 2558: a Fifteenth-Century Medical Commonplace Book’, in M. Schleissner, ed., Manuscript Sources of Medieval Medicine, New York and London: Garland, 1995, pp. 35–53.
Jones, P. M., ‘Thomas Fayreford: an English Fifteenth-Century Medical Practitioner’, in R. French et al., ed., Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease, London: Ashgate, 1998, pp. 157–83.
Jones, P. M., and Olsan, L. T., ‘Middleham Jewel: Ritual, Power, and Devotion’, Viator 31, 2000, pp. 249–90.
Reiser, G. R., Works of Science and Information, Vol. 10, in A. E. Hartung, ed., A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, 10 vols, New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1997.
Lord, A. B., The Singer of Tales, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Ogden, M. S., The ‘Liber de Diversis Medicinis’ in the Thornton Manuscript (MS. Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2), Early English Texts Society, original series 207, London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Olsan, L. T., ‘The Arcus Charms and Christian Magic’, Neophilologus 73, 1989, pp. 438–47.
Olsan, L. T., ‘Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice’, Social History of Medicine 16, 2003, pp. 343–66.
Olsan, L. T., ‘Latin Charms in British Library, MS Royal 12.B.XXV’, Manuscripta 33, 1989, pp. 119–28.
Ong, Walter J., Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the World, London: Methuen, 1982.
Paivio, A., Mental Representations: a Dual Coding Approach, Oxford Psychology Series 9, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Quentin, Henry, Les Martyrologies historique du moyen age, Paris: Lecoffre, 1908.
Roper, J., ‘Charms, Change, and Memory: Some Principles Underlying Variation’, Folklore: an Electronical Journal of Folklore 9, 1998, pp. 51–70.
Rubin, D. C., Memory in Oral Traditions: the Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-Out Rhymes, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Ryan, W. F., The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia, University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999.
Sheldon, S. E., ‘Middle English and Latin Charms, Amulets, and Talismans from Vernacular Manuscripts’, PhD diss. Tulane University, 1978.
Shinners, John, ed., Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500, Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures II, Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, 1999.
Skemer, D. C., ‘Written Amulets and the Medieval Book’, Scrittura e Civiltà 23, 1999, pp. 253–305.
Smallwood, T. M., ‘A Charm-motif to Cure Wounds Shared by Middle Dutch and Middle English’, in C. De Backer, ed., Cultuurhistorische Caleidoscoop aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. Willy L. Braekman, Gent: Stichting Mens en Kultuur, 1992, pp. 477–95.
Smallwood, T. M., ‘“God Was Born in Bethlehem …”: the Tradition of a Middle English Charm’, Medium Aevum 58, 1989, pp. 206–23.
Taavitsainen, I., ‘Middle English Recipes: Genre Characteristics, Text Type Features and Underlying Traditions of Writing’, Journal of Historical Pragmatics 2, 2001, pp. 85–113.
Tambiah, S. J., Culture, Thought, and Social Action: an Anthropological Perspective, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Thompson, S., Motif Index of Folk-Literature, 6 vols, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955.
Trotter, D. A., ‘Influence of Bible Commentaries on Old French Bible Translations’, Medium Aevum 56, 1987, pp. 257–75.
Voigts, L. E., and P. D. Kurtz, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: an Electronic Reference, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Yates, Frances A., The Art of Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2004 Lea T. Olsan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Olsan, L.T. (2004). Charms in Medieval Memory. In: Roper, J. (eds) Charms and Charming in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524316_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524316_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51972-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52431-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)