Ruth J. Salter, Saints, Cure-Seekers and Miraculous Healing in Twelfth-Century England

Abstract

Ruth J. Salter’s first monograph—and the inaugural volume in York Medieval Press’s new series on Health and Healing in the Middle Ages, edited by Peregrine Horden, Sara Ritchey and Linda Ehrsam Voigts (Series Advisor)—explores portrayals of illness/impairment and health in English miracle collections from the twelfth century. These collections were recorded by monastic communities to document the wonders performed by saints, whose relics (bones, clothing, blood, etc.) were in their possession and who, via these relics, could intercede with God on their behalf. Salter focuses on seven saints’ cults that are spread geographically across England: Swithun at Winchester, Dunstan at Canterbury, thelthryth at Ely, Modwenna at Burton-on-Trent, William of Norwich, Æbbe at Coldingham, and James the Greater at Reading. The miracle collections associated with all seven cults share a tendency to focus on local pilgrims, in contrast to, for example, the major twelfth-century cult of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, which had a much more international outlook. In her attention to smaller, local miracle collections, Salter moves away from earlier studies, like Ronald Finucane’s Miracles and Pilgrims (1977), which analysed over 3,000 posthumous miracles recorded throughout England. Instead, her methodology combines a statistical examination across collections with a close reading of ‘anecdotal comments’ (p. 91) in individual records. She asserts that, whilst miracle records conform to the various precedents of their genre (not least, that of the Bible), ‘no two accounts are the same, and many provide tantalising details of [an] individual’s personal experience of affliction and eventual miraculous recovery’ (p. 90).