Lire, écrire, soigner. La circulation des remèdes dans une communauté religieuse urbaine (Rome, xvie-xviie siècles)

Abstract

This article analyses a manuscript collection of recipes (ca. 1590-1643) and its context of production and use: the Oratory of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome. This book is at once a text, a paratext, and a notebook, and its material analysis attests to the ways in which it was produced, noting the use of manuscript sources and printed books kept in the Oratorian library, and the combination of writing and reading practices. The essay also aims to highlight the role of informal and oral routes in the dissemination of medical knowledge at the Vallicella, even emphasising the way in which care practices took place there through professional carers and the sharing of knowledge and therapeutic know-how between Oratorian priests. The aim is to assess their contribution to the formation of the collection and, ultimately, to show that the compilation of recipes was part of a wider process of circulation of medical knowledge, to be situated in a specific social and cultural milieu.

Keywords

• Rome
• 16th century
• Oratorians
• clergy
• recipes
• remedies