Laurie Thayer wrote this review.
Imagine that for the past several days, you have been suffering an unexplained pain. Over-the-counter pain relievers have not helped. Finally, you decide to take time off work and visit the doctor’s office. She quickly diagnoses your condition and prescribes medication; a few days later, you feel fine.
Now imagine that the year is 1175 and you suffer the same unexplained pain. The village cunning woman has been unable to relieve it and you cannot afford a physician. But there have been stories floating around for the last few years about miraculous cures at the tomb of Thomas Becket. Desperate, you scrape together enough money for the journey, kiss your wife, and set off on the long trip to Canterbury, hoping against hope that the saint’s holy relics will be the answer to your pain.
Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England, by Ronald C. Finucane, examines the connection between faith-healing and medicine. Because the medieval period had less scientific knowledge than our own, the pilgrimage was as standard a form of medication as aspirin is in our own day and age.
Finucane begins with a discussion of ancient Christianity. Rooted in pagan practices, it was not unusual to find that miraculous healings occurred at holy sites or near the graves of holy people. Although at first the newborn Church was not sure if it approved of such heathen events, it soon embraced them, and trade in holy relics became standard practice. Several anecdotes concerning monks slipping away from gravesites with relics in their mouths after “kissing” the tomb are told.
He also discusses the way that cults grew up around specific individuals, including Becket, Frideswide, and William of Norwich, among others. Surprisingly, most cults had a relatively short life of only about ten years before another saint claimed the attention of the populace and they began making their pilgrimages elsewhere, as demonstrated by a sharp drop-off in the number of cures and offerings left at shrines.
In the final portion of the book, Finucane examines the effects of the Reformation on pilgrimages and faith-healing. With the dissolution of the monasteries and destruction of shrines and relics, saints were purged from the English liturgies. Although their feasts continued to be kept in some areas, there was no longer a place to go for pilgrimage.
Finucane includes in his work numerous tales of miraculous healings, with details such as the crackling heard when twisted limbs straightened. These stories serve to give the reader a glimpse of what it was like to live in a time when medicine was as much superstition and faith as it was science.
Coincidentally, just after finishing this book, I watched an episode of the PBS’ Mystery series Cadfael, concerning the translation of the remains of St. Winifred from Wales to England. For those who may have never seen Cadfael, he is a crusader turned monk, whose keen insight is often called upon to solve murders occurring near his “peaceful” abbey. The television series is based on a series of books by Ellis Peters. This particular episode, “A Morbid Taste for Bones,” is based on the first of the Cadfael novels (both novel and tape are readily available) and makes a fascinating fictional companion to Finucane’s study.
(St. Martin’s Press, 1977, 1995)
