Tag: religion

This three-day conference marks the 10th Anniversary Annual Meeting on ‘Disease, disability and medicine in medieval Europe’. It will be hosted by Swansea University at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, 2–4 December 2016. The conference aims to explore the interactions between disability… Continue reading

With the opening of the This Is A Voice exhibition in Wellcome Collection, it is timely to take a look at voice-related curiosities within the Wellcome Library. The story of St Blaise offers a good starting point. Like many saints,… Continue reading

Easter provides a time for considering the significance of the gospels’ accounts of the last days of Jesus Christ: the sequence of crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. The woodcut above shows Martin Luther on the right and his protector Frederick the… Continue reading

Many bishops in medieval England possessed medical knowledge, but that did not mean that such knowledge was always viewed as a desirable quality in a bishop. In 1114, King Henry I of England decided that Faritius, abbot of Abingdon, should… Continue reading

The Wellcome Library has several fine examples of traditional mandalas, each a bounty of heavenly palaces, cemetries, animals, flowers, divine retinues etc. Some are currently on display in Wellcome Collection as part of the Tibet’s Secret Temple exhibition. The recently… Continue reading

Paper proposals are invited for a conference on ‘Religion and medicine: healing the body and soul from the Middle Ages to the modern day’ that will take place at Birkbeck, University of London, 15–16 July 2016. The conference is convened… Continue reading

Plague was one of the most feared and dreaded aspects of daily life in 15th century England. Although scholarly medicine attributed the plague to corrupt air, it was also explained in terms of divine punishment. Charms, healing remedies whose power… Continue reading

The Norwich artist John Sell Cotman (1782–1842) published numerous etchings of buildings in Norfolk, Yorkshire and also Normandy in France. The Library has a copy of one of his Normandy etchings, showing the chapel of Saint-Julien at Petit-Quevilly near Rouen.… Continue reading

The Library’s Western MS.275 is a remarkable volume. Produced in Florence, it contains inventories in Italian of the possessions of the hospital of San Giovanni Battista Decollato from 1387 to the mid-fifteenth century. The text is bound in wooden boards… Continue reading

Welcome to Spotlight, a regular series of blog posts that shine a light on some of the treasures in the Wellcome Library. You’ll be able to explore our ever-growing range of digitised materials, hear more about our new acquisitions and… Continue reading