Disease, Healing and Medical Knowledge in an Old Bulgarian Collection of Miracle Stories

Yanko M. Hristov; Dafina Kostadinova

doi:10.18778/2084-140X.12.37

Authors

Yanko M. Hristov South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Faculty of Law and History, Department of History, 66 Ivan Mihaylov Str., 2700 Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7882-9749
Dafina Kostadinova South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Faculty of Philology, Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, 66 Ivan Mihaylov Str., 2700 Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2466-7980

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2084-140X.12.37

Keywords:

hagiography, healing dreams, Old Bulgarian collection of miracle stories, health problems, disease, medical knowledge, treatment

Abstract

The Old Bulgarian hagiographical collection of miracle stories, named A Tale of the Iron Cross, is relatively well known among the scholars, but a sufficient number of its details still has not been studied properly. In fact, such a peculiarity seems somehow strange, especially if we take into consideration that the mixture of translated and original strata in the present Tale’s version does not hinder its significance as a valuable primary source of historical information. There can be no doubt that the religious aspect in the hagiographical collection in question is the leading one in the foreground. On the other hand, however, the records of the daily life activities should not be underestimated either. Their presence within the frames of the Tale helps a lot in the scholars’ attempts to reconstruct the knowledge, skills, habits or principles of social behaviour in the Bulgarian society in the late 9th – early 10th century.

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