Infirmity in antiquity and the Middle Ages : social and cultural approaches to health, weakness and care / edited by Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio, Jenni Kuuliala.

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing.

Contains revised papers from the conference Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages V: Infirmitas: Social and Cultural Approaches to Cure, Caring and Health held at the University of Tampere in August 2012-- Preface.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-311) and index.

Notes on contributors -- Preface -- Introduction: Infirmitas in antiquity and the Middle Ages / Christian Krötzl, Katariina Mustakallio and Jenni Kuuliala -- Part I. Defining infirmity and disability -- 1. Age, agency and disability : Suetonius and the emperors of the first century CE / Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence -- 2. Infirmitas or not? : short-statured persons in ancient Greece / Véronique Dasen -- 3. Performing dis/ability? : constructions of "infirmity" in late medieval and early modern life writing / Bianca Frohne -- 4. Nobility, community and physical impairment in later medieval canonization processes / Jenni Kuuliala -- 5. Towards a glossary of melancholy, depression and psychological distress in ancient Roman culture / Donatella Puliga -- Part II. Societal and cultural infirmitas -- 6. The crusader's Stigmata : true crusading and the wounds of Christ in the crusade ideology of the thirteenth century / Miikka Tamminen -- 7. Illness, self-inflicted body pain and supernatural stigmata : three ways of identification with the suffering body of Christ / Gábor Klaniczay -- 8. Imagery of disease, poison and healing in the late fourteenth-century polemics against Waldensian heresy / Reima Välimäki -- 9. Infirmitas romana and its cure : Livy's history therapy in the Ab urbe condita / Katariina Mustakallio and Elina Pyy -- Part III. Infirmity, healing and community -- 10. From Mithridatium to Potio sancti Pauli : the idea of a medicine from antiquity to the Middle Ages / Svetlana Hautala -- 11. Alternative medicine in pre-Roman and Republican Italy : sacred springs, curative baths and "votive religion" / Alison Griffith -- 12. Bathing the infirm: water basins in Roman iconography and household contexts / Ria Berg -- 13. Sexual incapacity in medieval Materia medica / Susanna Niiranen -- 14. Miracles and the body social : Infirmi in the middle Dutch miracle collection of Our Lady of Amersfoort / Jonas Van Mulder -- 15. Saints, healing and communities in the later middle ages : on roles and perceptions / Christian Krötzl -- Bibliography -- Index.