Article Title：The surgeon and the saints: Henri de Mondeville on divine healing
Abstract：
A common theme of medieval miracle collections was to highlight the inadequacies of secular medicine while promoting the divine healing power of the saints. An outspoken and contrasting view of divine healing is afforded by the fourteenth-century Parisian surgeon Henri de Mondeville. In his Chirurgia he promotes the qualities of his own field of surgery, based on theoretical knowledge and informed practice, which he maintains offer greater surety to those seeking alleviation of their suffering. Mondeville bemoans the level of people's credulity in the saints, especially St. Eloi, and criticizes ignorant surgeons and quacks who exploit it to cover their own inadequacies. He seeks to establish surgery on divine foundations and to validate its operations on the grounds of rationality. By rational explanation, Mondeville confidently pushes back the boundaries of the miraculous, refutes the healing miracles of saints and the competition which they pose to his profession. Mondeville offers a vivid insight into the nature of people's belief in, and expectations of, divine healing, while illustrating the task facing his profession in defining its own status, securing patients and inspiring them with confidence in the operations of the surgeon rather than the saint. (c) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Mondeville (Henri de); saints; surgery; divine healing; rationality
DOI: 10.1016/S0304-4181(00)00007-5
Source：JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY
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