Medicine and Religion c.1300 : The Case of Arnau de Vilanova

This book discusses the relationship between religion and medicine around 1300. Joseph Ziegler analyses the spiritual writings of two learned physicians in the light of their medical background. He examines the use of medical knowledge for non-medical purposes, and by clerics who did not engage in medical practice. He suggests that fusion rather than disjunction characterized the relationship between medicine and religion at that time, and that medicine had a cultural role which surpassed its physical therapeutic function.