CREOR Sponsored Event: Angelical Conjunctions: Crossroads of Medicine and Religion, 1200-1800
CREOR SPONSORED EVENT
Angelical Conjunctions: The Intersection of Religion and Medicine 1200-1800 brings together twenty-five scholars who focus on the late medieval and early modern periods. The conference invites us to see the connection between religion and medicine not as an inconvenient deviance of past societies, let alone as a necessarily adversarial relationship, but as a key phenomenon that enlightens a given society’s conceptions of the mind and the body, and how the society negotiates these competing conceptions. The connection between medical and spiritual practices took many forms over the centuries, from the pious provision of health care (in person or through endowed charity), to the archetypal figure of the healing prophet. Yet despite decades of specialized research, a coherent and analytical history of the "angelical conjunction" itself remains elusive.
Taking an inter-cultural and long-term perspective, Angelical Conjunctions investigates how Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions interpreted, produced, and shaped medical knowledge. We aim to develop methodological and theoretical perspectives on the "angelical conjunction(s)" of these two spheres.