Many historians of medieval art now look beyond soaring
cathedrals to study the relationship of architecture and
image-making to life in medieval society. In The Art of Healing,
Marcia Kupfer explores the interplay between church decoration and
ritual practice in caring for the sick. Her inquiry bridges
cultural anthropology and the social history of medicine even as it
also expands our understanding of how clergy employed mural
painting to cure body and soul.
Looking closely at paintings from ca. 1200 in the church of
Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, a castle town in Central France, Kupfer
traces their links to burial practices, the veneration of saints,
and the care of the sick in nearby hospitals. Through careful
analysis of the surrounding agrarian landscape, dotted with cults
targeting specific afflictions, especially ergotism (then known as
St. Silvan's fire), Kupfer sheds new light on the role of wall
painting in an ecclesiastical economy of healing and redemption.
Sickness and death, she argues, hold the key to understanding the
dynamics of Christian community in the Middle Ages. The Art of
Healing will be important reading for cultural anthropologists and
historians of both medicine and religion as well as for
medievalists and art historians.
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