The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Bonser, Wilfrid, 1887-1972.
Date:
1963
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    43§ VETERINARY AND AGRICULTURAL MAGIC body and to bury it in their own district; for they thought that it would ensure prosperous seasons if they could obtain it. So it was decided that they should divide the body between four places; the head was laid in a howe at Stein in Hringariki, and each man bore home a part of the body and laid it in howe; these howes are called “the howes of Halfdan”.’ 1 The following stories are also suggestive: (i) In that of St. Andrew, as given in the Blickling Homilies, the devil encourages the people to put the saint to death, and adds: ‘When he is dead, let us divide his body among our townsfolk.’ 1 2 (ii) This story of Gerbert, before he became pope, 3 is related in the Flores Historiarum. He went to Spain to learn astrology, and did homage to the Devil. He then entered the schools in France, ‘where he had many pupils in the aforesaid science’. When dying, ‘he ordered that he should be cut in pieces and scattered to the winds, adding “let him have the use of my members who had their homage, for my mind never consented to that profane act”.’ 4 (iii) The story of the dismemberment of Hewald the Black by the pagan Germans he was attempting to convert, and the throw ing of his limbs into the Rhine, is told by Bede. 5 Bede continues that his body and that of Hewald the White who was martyred at the same time ‘were carried against the stream for the space of almost forty miles’, and that ‘a long ray of light, reaching up to heaven, shone every night over the place where they arrived’, a pheno menon which has been mentioned before. They were buried by order of Pepin of Heristal in Cologne. Their relics were distributed to various churches in Germany, but this distribution was by the Christian Church which was thus, perhaps unconsciously, conti nuing a pagan custom. The distribution of relics, including the dismembered body of King Oswald, has been dealt with in Chapter XI. The belief in the power of the Earth, both for healing and puri fying, is shown in various Anglo-Saxon charms and practices. 1 Heimskringla: Saga of Halfdan the Black, ch. 9. I have used the translation of Dr. Hilda Ellis {The Road to Hel, p. 100) which brings out the points which are pertinent: these are missed among the mannerisms of William Morris’s translation. 2 Blickling Homilies, Early Eng. Text Soc., p. 240. 3 Gerbert was pope for ten months in 998 as Sylvester II. 4 Flores Historiarum, vol. i, 1890, pp. 524-5. (Rolls Series.) 5 Bede, Eccles. Hist. v. 10.