Drawing upon discourses developed in earlier Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian antiquity, the little-known text De excidio Hierosolymitano, also dubbed ‘Pseudo-Hegesippus’, develops a discourse of Jewish disease within a history of Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. Based upon Flavius Josephus's Greek Jewish War, this Latin Christian text of Late Antiquity thus deploys a rhetoric of Jewish contagion within its historiographical solution to the Christian theological exigency of explaining the Jews out of history. Far from being an incidental or merely aesthetic component of this work, this article shows that a discourse of Jewish sickness constitutes a central component of Pseudo-Hegesippus's conceptualization and presentation of the end of Jerusalem and the historical demise of the Jews.

The value of bodily affliction as a means for integrating an active life of good works on earth with the contemplative values of heaven, prior to the return of Christ and the world's end, remains relatively unexplored, despite suffering saints being a common medieval trope. Using the work of Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede, this article seeks to explore the interrelation of an active contemplative life and bodily affliction to shed light upon Bede's use of Gregory and his presentation of Cuthbert's episcopate to forge a distinctive understanding of the links between bodily illness, episcopal identity and the biblical ordering of time, as that ordering finds expression in biblical eschatology and apocalyptic.

The early medieval period has been traditionally cast as the nadir of medicine in the West. Such an image stemmed in part from the negative perceptions of ‘superstitious’ charms and incantations, in which medicine was seen to be detrimentally affected by Christian and pagan influences alike. This outdated view has been revised substantially, and the intersections between medicine and religion are now understood to reflect a complex, multivalent approach to healing. However, this re-evaluation of early medieval medicine, and especially of recipe literature, has concentrated primarily on Old English material. As a result, the substantial corpus of early medieval Latin continental recipes found outside the established canon of classical and late antique texts has largely been overlooked. This article seeks to redress this imbalance, offering the first systematic investigation into the ways in which Christian elements appear in these comparatively understudied pharmaceutical writings. The article's findings have significant implications for our understanding of Latin recipe literature and of the evolution of medical knowledge in early medieval Europe.

Religious processions were commonly held during plague outbreaks in medieval Europe to provide succour against disease. The Bianchi of 1399, a popular religious revival, is one such example. This article addresses the Bianchi in Tuscany, demonstrating the crucial role of ecclesiastical authorities in moulding this response to plague, and contributing to both religious history and the history of medicine. It first problematizes the connection between the Bianchi and a punitive plague which could purportedly be remedied by religious devotions. The role of the clergy in the movement is then examined, demonstrating their prominence in preparing the populace, preaching and even leading processions. An assessment of Bianchi processional composition and routes reveals exploitation of pre-existing liturgical traditions. This localized, comparative analysis demonstrates how individual Tuscan towns organized and supported these devotional activities, successfully managing the popular response to plague expressed in the Bianchi devotions.

This article considers preaching during plague epidemics in early modern Germany, tracing how preachers and priests engaged with the crisis that befell their towns. It does so by discussing three important features of preaching during plague epidemics to illustrate the arrangements made during outbreaks of plague and what they can tell us more broadly about preaching during times of crisis. First, it shows the changes and continuities in personnel during plague epidemics. Second, it considers the contents of the sermons and how plague was a continuous feature of many early modern sermons. Third, the article discusses spaces and how they were used for preaching during outbreaks of plague. The article shows the malleability of sermons and how Protestants and Catholics adapted recurring themes to illustrate divine punishment and mercy.

This article explores the nexus of healing between clergy and physicians in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century medicine by focusing on the disease of melancholia, and in particular on the earliest extant English monograph on that subject, A Treatise of Melancholie (1586), by Timothy Bright. Melancholia was a disease especially apt to be treated by both medical practitioners and the clergy as it was widely defined as both corporal and spiritual in origin. What makes Bright's treatise particularly noteworthy is the vocation of the author: Bright was both doctor and cleric, and his work straddled both occupations as he defined, diagnosed and attempted to cure melancholy in his reader. By examining what Bright wrote about the various aspects of the disease, this article provides further insight into the clashes, conciliations and cooperation between early modern medical practitioners.

This article examines the myriad ways that sickness affected, and was exacerbated by, puritan preaching in seventeenth-century England. The term ‘puritan’ is deployed here to encompass Church of England, and later Nonconformist, ministers who espoused the significance of preaching God's word as a pastoral duty. By exploring occasions of, and motivations for, sermonizing when sick, such a study reveals that illness played a much larger role in the pulpit performances of England's preachers, especially amongst puritan clerics, than has hitherto been acknowledged.

In the eighteenth century, the ideal of the priest in society was reformed by Polish and Lithuanian Catholic bishops. Instrumental in these reforms were Ignacy Massalski (1726–94), bishop of Vilnius (1762–94) and Michał Poniatowski (1736–94), bishop of Płock (1773–85), then archbishop of Gniezno (1785–94), and simultaneously administrator of the diocese of Kraków (1782–90). Their programmes included making clergy responsible for medical education and the organization of healthcare, and seeking to reform customs which were viewed as detrimental to health. The article draws on pastoral letters, popular educational books and administrative decrees to ascertain what ideas reformers imposed on the clergy. Episcopal visitation protocols, sermons and parish school textbooks are analysed to verify the effects of reforms and ascertain what was taught about health in the parishes. The examination of the relatively rare egodocuments of priests sheds light on how they experienced their afflictions. The article concludes that healthcare was an important topic for Catholic enlighteners in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and that priests played a significant role in promoting it. Reforms were driven by humanitarian and physiocratic principles, and were facilitated by an optimistic belief in the benefits of medicine. Nonetheless, many enlightened programmes failed because priests were unwilling or unable to implement changes that interfered with lived religion.

Eighteenth-century moral theologians in Spain expressed concern that many Catholics were obtaining permission to avoid fasting and abstinence from meat by claiming that they were ill and required medical dispensations. This article examines the theological and medical debate which occurred over a series of treatises and essays in which physicians and moral theologians sought to come to a common understanding of when a Spaniard was infirm enough to be medically excused from fasting and, perhaps more importantly, who had the authority to make this decision. Throughout the eighteenth century in Spain, this responsibility continued to be shared by priests and physicians. The debate highlights the contest for medical authority, mitigated by doubt. It also suggests that any understanding of early modern medical pluralism must include members of the theological community as well as health professionals.

A popular nineteenth-century spiritual barometer displays the steps one might take in the Christian life to bring oneself closer to either ‘glory’ or ‘perdition’. Near the top of the barometer, nearing ‘glory’ is the bearing of painful tribulations, connected to the cross of Christ. Whilst pain was undeniably an undesired presence in life, it was also a hallmark of spiritual progress. The denouement of Christian health, therefore, was often to be in pain. Looking at pain narratives of six evangelical Dissenters, this article explores how pain was perceived by these individuals through the lens of the atonement. As the atonement was a loving aspect of God's providence, so too was pain in the Christian life a quotidian display of divine love. The meaning and purpose of pain was sanctification, understood as a retributive, though mainly redemptive, implement of God's fatherly love. Whilst sharing a common framework of atonement, case studies from different denominations display nuanced differences in their pain narratives: the Baptists and Congregationalists examined here emphasized the sin that required the atonement, whereas the Quakers emphasized suffering with or alongside Christ.

Following an outbreak of cholera in Hamburg in 1831, Amalie Sieveking founded the Weiblicher Verein für Armen- und Krankenpflege (Women's Association for the Care of the Poor and the Sick). This was the first Protestant religious voluntary society in Germany organized and led by a woman. Sieveking's conception of the Christian life of faith and the contemporary needs of the kingdom of God convinced her that Protestant women needed to assume a more active role in German society. The Women's Association visited the homes of those who were sick or in other difficult personal circumstances. They attempted to promote the comprehensive well-being of those whom they assisted by providing food, clothing and other necessities of life, paid employment, housing and opportunities to cultivate their spiritual life.

This article examines the first London Oratory, located in King William St, London between May 1849 and March 1854, during the provostship of its founder F. W. Faber (1814–63). Beginning with a discussion of the physically unhealthy climate at the Oratory and the situation of its congregation, it then considers Faber's health while provost before examining his use of words such as sickness, illness, health and infection in written works and analysing his use of these as metaphors for the spiritual life. The metaphorical concepts of health and sickness are linked to his pessimism about humanity and his preoccupation with the four last things, obtaining eternal salvation, and the relationship between the individual Christian and God. The article thus highlights something of the spirituality, health and teaching of an individual priest, as well as the preoccupations of a parish in mid-nineteenth-century London.

From 1879, evangelical missions aimed specifically at Jews began providing free medical services to the newly arrived immigrant community in London's East End. This article focuses on three specific medical missions to Jews belonging to the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Jews and the Mildmay Mission to the Jews. It considers the particular attractions of these medical missions in terms of what they were able to offer the immigrant Jew that existing state and voluntary medical services did not provide, alongside the cost and possible risk posed by attendance. The article questions whether the popularity of evangelical medical missions within the Jewish East End is as surprising as it may first appear, if the limited health care options available to the nineteenth-century poor are considered in conjunction with the additional obstacles facing Jewish immigrants, such as cultural and religious differences, anti-Jewish prejudice and most notably the language barrier.

Then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the kingdom of Slavonia was characterized in the nineteenth century by constant political and administrative changes. After its liberation from Ottoman conquests, the rural area of the kingdom, already underpopulated, was left with damaged and poor infrastructure. In such circumstances, and as the most educated figures within their communities, Catholic bishops from the diocese of Đakovo and Srijem oversaw the reorganization and reform of local society, providing the foundations for further social development. They renewed and modernized local infrastructure and the production of basic goods, while also providing access to clean water and introducing hygiene measures in cemeteries to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. In addition, they played a crucial role in the opening of hospitals and schools in the region. In such work, one can detect elements of the approach later known as public health.

Esme Cleall observes that for nineteenth-century British missionary families ill-health was constructed as being ‘reflexive of and contributory to a specifically missionary identity’. This article argues that while this was a persistent theme, a new and significantly different discourse emerged emphasizing missionary families’ health. Children were central to this discursive shift. The article focuses on missionary children's health, using selected Anglo-American cases. There was an uneasy overlap of religiously motivated rhetoric that still expected illness and death to be part of missionary childhood experience, and a professionalized discourse that redefined missionary families as sites of health and well-being. This culminated in medical and academic literature within religious and missionary circles that constructed missionaries’ children as a new category. Thus churches responded both to the development of the medical profession and to the development of modern child-centred thinking and practices, in the process developing a new missiological or theological response to childhood.

This article explores the evidence given to the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1904–6), to examine how Anglo-Catholic clergy and parishes across England were caring for the sick and dying at the beginning of the twentieth century. It considers why Anglo-Catholic clergy and parishes had come by that point to believe that the existing provisions for the care of the sick and the dying provided by the Book of Common Prayer were not wholly satisfactory. Through the replies of clergy to the commission, it discusses the extent to which these practices were born out of a need to find new ways to reach the sick and the dying in twentieth-century England, and to what extent they were seen as demonstrating an allegiance to a more ‘catholic’ theology.

In many communities, from the mid-Victorian era until well into the twentieth century, one Sunday every year was dedicated to the work of local hospitals and dispensaries. Originating in Birmingham and designated Hospital Sunday, it enabled congregations to remember their responsibilities towards the sick and it raised much-needed funds for what was essentially voluntary provision, prior to the establishment of the National Health Service. In so doing, they were demonstrating their commitment to philanthropy and (for many) the tenets of the social gospel. Hospital Sunday also symbolized an element of interdenominational cooperation, with most denominations participating, at a time when relations between the established church and the Free Churches on other issues could sometimes be fraught. Moreover, it facilitated the engagement of churches with charitable organizations, such as friendly societies. This article aims to explore the origins of Hospital Sunday, to analyse its key attributes, to assess its appeal and to highlight some of the issues which arose during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

The advent of the welfare state has been seen by some historians as a decisive blow for British traditions of voluntarism, echoing some of the concerns raised in the lead up to the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS). This article examines the practice of Hospital Sunday in England in the post-war period. In doing so it evidences the effect of the nationalization of the voluntary hospitals in 1948 on the relationships between clergy, their congregations and health care. It argues that much greater attention needs to be paid to the continuities evident in Christian-inspired social action in the NHS in the long 1950s and after. Attending to the role of such Christian social action allows historians both to extend our knowledge of the importance of Christianity to social life in the period and to deepen our understanding of the operation of the welfare state.

This article analyses the intellectual sources and global influence of the demonology of Derek Prince (1915–2003), a former philosophy fellow of King's College, Cambridge, who, after his move to the United States in 1963, became a globally influential Pentecostal teacher and author. It argues that his academic expertise in the philosophy of Plato shaped his understanding of the invisible realm of spiritual powers and its impact on the health and material well-being of Christians. Prince's teaching on ancestral curses and the vulnerability of Christians to demonization has been widely received in Africa and other parts of the non-Western world, appearing to provide answers to endemic problems of chronic sickness and impoverishment.