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Multos Ex Medicinae Arte Curaverat, Multos Verbo Et Oratione: Curing in Medieval Portuguese Saints’ Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Iona McCleery*
Affiliation:
University of Durham

Extract

The following is a description of a miracle attributed to the Portuguese friar-physician, Gil de Santarém (d. 1265):

… Domingas Pires… had a great abscess on her left hand and for more than forty days had suffered pain so strong that she could not bear it. She went to Gil’s tomb and, scattering some of its earth on her hand and arm, she prayed in supplication and with tears to the blessed man that, since in life he had been a physician not only of souls but also of bodies and had cured many through the art of medicine and through word and prayer and now that he was powerful with God, he would deign to cure this his supplicant. As soon as she had prayed, her very serious abscess burst spontaneously.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2005

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References

1 Resende, André de, Aegidius Scallabitanus: um Diálogo sobre Fr. Gil de Santarém. Estudo Introductorio, Edição Crítica, Tradução e Notas, ed. Pereira, Virgínia da C. Soares (Lisbon, 2000) [hereafter: AS], 4989 Google Scholar. A version can also be found in ActaSS, 3 May, 400–36. I am responsible for all translations.

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6 The Latin AS contains eighty healing miracles. See I. McCleery, ‘Life and Death in Medieval Portugal: the Cult and Miracles of Gil de Santarém’, in Maria João Branco, ed., Shaping the State in Medieval Portugal: Administration, Church and Society (forthcoming).

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