Medieval Nuns Used Spices as Medicine—and Saw No Conflict With Faith
A 16th-century Birgittine convent blended pharmaceutical knowledge with religious healing, treating spiced remedies and prayer as complementary rather than competing approaches to health. The finding reveals how early modern institutions integrated practical wellness strategies with spiritual care—a model now relevant to modern health systems exploring holistic, multi-method approaches to patient wellbeing.
Originaltitel: Health in Body and Soul in a Female Birgittine Convent 1516-1522
<p>This chapter analyses the perceptions of health of the early modern former spice merchant and Birgittine nun, Katerina Lemmel. At the monastery she entered at age fifty, they combined religious healing methods with humoral pathological methods. Katerina introduced spiced food, salutary drinks, and medication made of spices and a liquid binder. She considered the medicinal effects of using spices in these different ways as equivalent to traditional religious healing methods. They all promoted well-being and contentment, as well as strength. Nevertheless, whether one would remain healthy or recover from an ailment lay in the hands of God. However, an individual should contribute to their own well-being. First and foremost, one should eat the right foods but not abstain from food.</p>