Visit to the witch from the Main Church of Rila Monastery, 1844. Photograph by Stavri Tserovski
This intriguing fresco was painted on the walls of the Rila
Monastery, Bulgaria, in 1844. If you look closely at the bottom
left-hand corner of this fresco, you might spot a demon urinating in a
woman’s potion as she hands it to a sick man. Here, viewers of this
fresco are encouraged to connect the activities of female healers with
demons and evil spirits. This negative depiction of female healers was a
common sight on the walls of nineteenth-century Bulgarian religious
institutions, and continued a centuries-long struggle between the Church
and local healers. The Church demonised female healers, but regularly
concerned itself with the health issues of one group that was more
likely to rely upon the powers of these practitioners –women. Indeed,
religious texts of various periods deal with health and sickness.
Religious healing has been discussed on The Recipes Project before.
Medieval South Slavic religious manuscripts commonly contain a range of
texts relating to health: curative prayers; medical recipes; healing
practices; short medical treatises; prognostications for an illness; and
prophylactic instructions (such as dietary texts). In this post, we
would like to share some common recipes, incantations and prayers
addressing women’s health issues. Detail from Fresco Photograph by Adelina Angusheva-Tihanov
The Hodoş Miscellany (Hodoshki Sbornik), so called because of its
association with the Hodoş monastery now in Romania, is one of the
richest sources for fifteenth century South Slavic remedies. This
collection contains a range of recipes, including several concerning
women. One such recipe is for conception. For this, it recommends
administering morning baths from a dried rabbit’s womb or placenta (lozhe)
filled with water during the woman’s menstruation. Interestingly, this
recipe bears close resemblance to another remedy for conception
presented by Dioscorides. According to Dioscorides, rabbit’s rennet
mixed with butter should be used for purging baths during menstruation
to cause pregnancy. In the remedy from Hodoş the replacement of the
‘rennet’ (stored in the stomach) with a ‘womb’, perhaps stems from a
belief in the sympathetic magical influence of the rabbit’s fecundity.
Interestingly, versions of this remedy continued to circulate in South
Slavic folk tradition well into the twentieth century. For instance, in
the 1980s, Margaret Dimitrova interviewed an old woman from the village
of Brestnitsa in the Lovech region who continued to use pessaries made
with rabbit fat as a fertility remedy. Map of the Balkans, c. 1340 from Wiki Commons
Aside from providing fertility aids, the Hodoş miscellany also offers
readers medicines to ease the pains of childbirth. We would like to
bring three of these to your attention. The first remedy advises users
to place a wreath of Euforbia officinarum on the head of the
woman in labour. The other two offer brief magical rituals accompanied
by powerful Biblical formulae. One instructs the user to write the short
biblical quote “Open you, Gate of heaven” on a piece of paper
and place it on the woman’s back. The second advises the reader to have a
well-watered sponge in his or her left hand, and with their right hand
inscribe on the top of the door: ‘Tear it down to its foundations!’ [Psalms 136:7]. The use of the door here as a locus in
performing the conjuration might be a symbolic gesture associated with
transition. The biblical quotation here took on multiple functions. ‘Tear it down to its foundations!’
is also used in prayers against swelling and water retention in men and
horses. The meaning of the Biblical text was quite literally
understood. The implication was of liberation, rather than destruction.
In all cases it was applied because of the similarity in the expected
results, regardless of the nature of the pains. Evidence suggests the
use of this kind of remedies was widespread in the Balkans. A Medieval Bulgarian Bible from Wiki Commons
The sources presented here from South Slavic literate culture
inevitably show the role of medieval monasteries and parish churches in
the transmission of healing practices. Indeed, the role of the –
male-dominated – Church might help explain the spread of some of these
recipes across South Eastern Europe: religious institutions formed a
network of literate centres, exchanging texts and ideas. Those
institutions preserved and employed ancient medical knowledge, healing
practices and biblical texts to support women in the moment of pain and
need. Unlike them, however, the female practitioners (as the one in the
fresco), who helped medieval women throughout the lifecycle—be they
midwives, local witches, or wise and older members of the family—have
left behind no sources of their own. Adelina Angusheva-Tihanov is
a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, working on magic,
medicine, and religion in Medieval South Slavic Manuscripts. To find out
more about women’s health in the Medieval South Slavic context, see
Angusheva-Tihanov, A. “Ancient Medical Knowledge of the Woman’s Body in
the Medieval Slavic Context: The Case of the Prague Manuscript IXF10.” Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch Vol. 51,(2005) : 139-152. Margaret Dimitrova is a Professor at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, working on Medieval and Early Modern South Slavonic manuscripts. Margaret has published on medieval Slavonic translations of biblical texts and prayers.
