Medical knowledge in thirteenth-century preaching: the sermons of Luca da Bitonto

ABSTRACT Metaphors of physical health and illness occurred frequently in medieval exegesis, with diseased bodies providing figurative language that could be applied to sin and its effects upon the soul. The increasing availability of newly translated medical learning in Europe in the thirteenth century augmented and enriched this discourse in innovative ways. The present paper offers a close analysis of the systematic use of sophisticated medical knowledge in an unpublished collection of model sermons, written c.1240 by the Franciscan preacher Luca da Bitonto. Produced at least 50 years earlier than comparable sermons previously shown to contain advanced medical metaphor, Luca’s sermons offer new evidence for the intellectual and theological contexts in which thirteenth-century preachers sought out detailed and accurate knowledge of the natural world, and for the ways in which new medical knowledge was disseminated and incorporated into medieval religious discourse.