The Origin of Medieval Healthcare in Northern Iberia: Hospitality, medicine, and the spread of knowledge on the Camino de Santiago
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- June 18, 2020
- Creator
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Valcarce-Aspegren, Marcus
- Affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Abstract
- Medicine in the northwestern portion of the medieval Iberian kingdoms remains largely uncharted academic terrain. Scholars have attributed this gap in historical knowledge to a lack of readily available, substantial documentation. While this could be the case, some scholars have also argued that the documentation does exist, but that the area has been overlooked academically and that more archival research is warranted. Therefore, while historians like Luis Garcia Ballester and Michael McVaugh have successfully been able to compose expansive and compelling works describing healthcare in the crowns of Aragon and Castile, no such broadly encompassing texts exist for Galicia, Asturias, Leon, and the surrounding northern territories. Moreover, James D’Emilio writes in his book, Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia, that due to an “orientation of North American historiography towards Mediterranean Spain and Castile […] Galicia and Atlantic Iberia were consequently ignored [and] dismissed as a backwater, the early medieval kingdom remained terra incognita in international, and particularly Anglophone, scholarship.” That is to say, perhaps due to the shortage in material evidence, much of the literature appears to, implicitly or otherwise, overlook or dismiss these areas as mere appendices to the greater Castilian Kingdom. The writing of Louis Barrau-Dihigo exemplify this dismissal: “The history of the Asturian kingdom is strictly national, and lacking in documents. Finally, it is—in its extreme poverty—most monotonous, offering hardly anything but a recitation of battles or revolts.” Indeed, it is rather undeniable that treating the region in isolation does present a historically barren picture. However, there are good reasons to move away from these notions of an intellectually and culturally isolated northwest—particularly in the study of its medieval medical practices. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that, due to the unlikely and spectacular transformation of Galicia into one of Europe’s principal destinations for Christian pilgrimage from 11th-14th century, it would indeed be a mistake to treat medieval healthcare in this region as a simple extension or derivative of medicine in Castile proper.
- Date of publication
- spring 2017
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: Robinson Honors Fellowship
- Advisor
- McVaugh, Michael
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Academic concentration
- Interdisciplinary Studies
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 2017
- Language
- English
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