In Antiquity, as is still very much the case today, illness and disease
\ncould trigger a personal crisis in which a range of emotions from
\nuncertainty and restlessness to hope played a leading role. Given that in
\nsuch situations plagued with anxiety no one remedy was often enough to put
\nthe ill at ease, the suffering often took recourse to all available
\nresources, both terrestrial and supernatural, in order to obtain a
\nlonged-for cure. Accordingly, in many times and places medicine has gone
\nhand in hand with magical-religious practices. Indeed, since the
\neffectiveness of medical and therapeutical remedies were largely seen to
\ndepend on the favorable intervention of a deity, these two types of
\nprocedures were thought to work in tandem to bring about a patient\u2019s
\nrecovery.<\/p>\n
If medicine is a discipline that seeks to restore an individual\u2019s health
\nthrough empirical observation and the application of therapeutic remedies,
\nmagic purports to influence a patient by supernatural means. Both medicine
\nand magic attempt to act upon the body, where these two forces can either
\ncooperate or, alternatively, vie with one another. Therefore, while
\nmagical-religious practices could certainly work in conjunction with
\nmedical treatments to cure the body through the use of amulets or
\napotropaic objects, it is equally true that those same practices could be
\nused to attack the body, bombarding it with all sorts of spells and curses.<\/p>\n
The ways in which medicine and magical-religious practices were perceived
\nto work together during Antiquity undoubtedly vary depending on the
\nspecific historical and cultural context. In Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt,
\narcane medical practices, for instance, are characterized by the equally
\nimportant role played by medical and magical-religious practices. This
\nhelps explain why preserved recipes contain spells meant to cure diseases
\ncaused by gods or demons. The magical aspects of these diseases, which are
\nclearly seen in the perceived causes and cures of these illnesses, are
\nalways accompanied by (presumably) curative ingredients. Despite the
\nundeniable advances in medical knowledge, Greek and Roman societies, for
\ntheir part, lent enormous importance to supernatural manifestations. Even
\nafter the birth of scientific medicine in sixth and fifth-century Greece,
\nthe link between magic and medicine did not dissolve. In fact, this link
\nwas influenced by new theories about diseases and cures as well as by
\nskepticism towards already accepted theories. Something similar is afoot in
\nRome: upon its arrival to the *urbs* in the third century BCE, scientific
\nmedicine lived side-by-side with popular medicine, which was strongly
\ninfluenced by magic, in the contemporary clinical theories that prestigious
\nGreek doctors expounded. By the second century CE, however, Galen denounced
\nthe quacks that practiced a type of medicine based in spells. The vehemence
\nof his condemnation betrays the success of this type of medical practice in
\nsecond-century Rome.<\/p>\n
While throughout Antiquity we can trace patterns of interaction and
\ninfluence between magic and medicine that result from historical cultural
\nidiosyncrasies, we should not run the risk of suggesting that this
\nrelationship was static at any point: on the contrary, in any cultural
\ncontext the relationship between medicine and magic is a fluid one whose
\nlimits and borders are often blurred and murky (see, for example, the
\nparticularly slippery lexeme \u03c6\u1f71\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03bd, which not only can refer to a
\n\u2018poison\u2019 or \u2018medicine,\u2019 as Derrida famously argued, but also to a \u2018spell\u2019,
\n\u2018charm\u2019 or \u2018philtre&rsquo\u00a0The relationship between both forces is undoubtedly
\nan extremely rich and complex one, upon which a range of sources, such as
\nclay tablets, literary and juridical sources, iatromagical papyri and the
\nepigraphic record broadly speaking, shed light.<\/p>\n
This workshop seeks to provide an interdisciplinary forum in which new
\napproaches to the relationship between magic and medicine can be discussed
\nand debated. We invite scholars of antiquity (e.g. historians, epigraphers,
\narchaeologists, papyrologists, philologists, cultural theorists and
\nphilosophers) who have completed a doctoral dissertation and have a
\ndeveloped academic interest in the topic to submit an abstract on the
\ninteraction between magic and medicine in ancient Mediterranean cultures.
\nWe are eager to receive proposals that tackle this question from early
\nMesopotamian cultures and Egypt all the way through Late Antiquity. We
\nwelcome scholars working with any type of evidence (literary,
\narcheological, epigraphic, papyrological, etc.).<\/p>\n
Those who are interested in participating in the workshop should send an In Antiquity, as is still very much the case today, illness and disease could trigger a personal crisis in which a range of emotions from...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferenze"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"fr","enabled_languages":["it","en","fr"],"languages":{"it":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"fr":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7090,"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7087\/revisions\/7090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lama.fileli.unipi.it\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nabstract (ca. 250-300 words written in Spanish, English, French or Italian)
\nto\u00a0magandmed2019@gmail.com<\/a>\u00a0<mag&med2019@gmail.com<\/a>>. Speakers will be
\nallotted 20 minutes to present their research as well as an additional 10
\nminutes to field questions. Abstracts should be sent by June 30, 2019. As
\nsoon as the organizing committee has reviewed all proposals, speakers will
\nbe contacted in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"