A healthy Christian city: Christianising health care in late fourteenth-century Seville

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay traces the interconnected endeavours to forge civic health-care provisions and to Christianise the public sphere in late fourteenth-century Seville. Following waves of plague and civil unrest, and growing religious fervour, Seville of the period was building its civic structures anew. Within this process, the municipality and central religious figures in the city took initiatives to advance health care and public health. This essay demonstrates the breadth of measures invested in pursuing health in the city and their entanglement with the religious agenda. The individuals and institutions which sponsored and endorsed health care also advocated the ideal of a Christian community versed in the principles of the Christian faith. The unique case study of Seville’s closely-knit community of health-care promoters sheds light on the significant role of health care and the perception of health within Iberian religious culture of the period.