Claire Burridge – författare

This book offers an examination of a significant number of largely unedited minuscule texts that were transcribed in the marginal spaces of manuscripts and generated by intercessory, apotropaic and healing practices in the early Middle Ages. As they were produced in different languages, these ‘words of power’ have rarely been studied as a single corpus. By placing them into dialogue, this volume allows us to see both typological similarities and cultural differences in their production across Western Europe and the Mediterranean world. The collected essays approach these texts with similar questions, while bringing methodologies and perspectives from different academic disciplines and traditions. In doing so, they provide a timely synthetic analysis of these ambiguous, often overlooked texts located in the grey zone between ‘liturgy’ and ‘magic’.

Fresh perspectives on how medical texts, broadly construed, were recorded, perceived and utilised.The past few decades have witnessed significant shifts in the scholarly investigation of early medieval medicine and its texts, moving far beyond outdated stereotypes of stagnation and superstition, not least via close study of the manuscript evidence, which has enabled a better appreciation of the processes involved in the recording and transfer of medical knowledge and healing practices. This book builds on these recent developments. With a particular focus on transmission, translation and transformation, the essays collected here offer detailed explorations of sources, contexts, producers and uses, examining material ranging from Bald's Leechbook and continental Latin recipe collections to Old Norse sagas and a Byzantine Greek treatise on venomous animals (Book V of Paul of Aegina's Pragmateia). Several contributors explore Old English's multifarious connections with the Latin tradition, discussing charms, obstetric and gynaecological texts, as well as the Peri didaxeon. The volume concludes with an afterword by Peregrine Horden on future directions of study, inviting further research into this vibrant and growing field. Chapter 3 is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND. The article received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101018645).