Overview

At the intersection of medieval religion and medicine. Prince Louis, son of Charles II of Anjou, died at age twenty-three in 1297, but had already taken vows as a Franciscan friar and been invested as bishop of Toulouse only six months earlier. Immediately after he was buried in Marseille, miracles were reported—first by local citizens then by pilgrims as rumors of his powers spread to villages and towns in Provence. Louis was canonized in 1317, the third member of the First Order of the Friars Minor to achieve official sainthood, after Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Anthony of Padua. Originally written in Provençal and then translated into Latin, The Book of Miracles of Saint Louis, Bishop of Toulouse carefully records 211 miracle stories that attest to Louis’s qualifications for canonization and document remarkable community engagement in saint-making. Illness prompted most petitions to Saint Louis. The narratives thus include detailed reports of diseases, conditions, and disabilities afflicting both people and animals. At a time when new medical practices were being promoted and both Christian and Jewish physicians were ubiquitous at the bedsides of the sick, The Book of Miracles testifies to an enduring faith in God and in the healing skills of meritorious saints such as Louis, who was unequivocally qualified as a “doctor of souls.” The Book of Miracles of Saint Louis, Bishop of Toulouse is the first translation of the early fourteenth-century Latin manuscript and offers vivid and valuable insights into medieval medicine and mentalités.

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Francine Michaud is Emerita and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Calgary.

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