Sanctified surgery and holy healing: providing healthcare in sixth-century Tours
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2020-07-03
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en
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It has often been stated that healthcare collapsed with the perceived fall of the Roman Empire. This thesis reveals that this apparent collapse is illusory. Focusing mainly on the works of Gregory of Tours, this thesis aims to investigate how the church complex at Tours in late sixth-century Gaul aided those suffering from blindness by providing cure, therapy and care.
This thesis shows that over the centuries the importance of curing blindness rises starkly and that different church complexes in Gaul performed biomedical cures. Furthermore, this thesis reveals that the current historiographical trend of judging hospitals based on their proximity to the Byzantine ideological pole is problematic. It instead proposes a scaled definition of establishments of healing in order to understand them as an integral part of their own culture of healing.
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