From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century)
Nelide Romeo, Olivier Gallo and Giuseppe Tagarelli*
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Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2015, 11:50
doi:10.1186/s13002-015-0037-z
Published: 6 June 2015
Abstract (provisional)
Background The relationship between spirituality, religion and medicine has been recognized
since antiquity. Despite large differences in their history, society, economy and
cultures human communities shared a common belief that spirituality and religion played
an important role in the healing of diseases. Methods The study of religious remedies
used by Italian folk medicine in order to treat diseases was based on a review of
literature sources compiled between the late nineteenth century and the early to mid
twentieth century. Results This approach lead to the unearthing of heterogeneous healing
methods that have been divided into different categories: Saints, Pilgrimages, Holy
Water/Blessed Oil, Blessings, Religious Objects, Contact, Signs, Formulas and The
Religious Calendar. Some of these practices, partly still performed in Italy, are
a part of the landscape of the official Catholic Church, others come out of a process
of syncretism between the Catholic Religion, the magic world and pre-Christian rituals.
Conclusions The vastus corpus of religious remedies, highlighted in the present work,
shows the need for spirituality of the sick and represent a symbolic framework, that
works as a filter, mediates, containing the pain that constantly fills everyone’s
lives in remote ages even in the third millennium. All of this confirms how important
the health-workers know and interpret these existential needs from anthropological
and psychological points of view
