Sethina Watson, On Hospitals: Welfare, Law, and Christianity in Western Europe, 400-1320
Claire Burridge
From the very outset of On Hospitals: Welfare, Law, and Christianity in Western Europe, 400–1320, Sethina Watson makes clear that study medieval hospitals, given their ‘dizzying’ (p.4) diversity practice, centrality to Christian charitable initiatives, yet general absence from legal writings, is complicated. Over following pages, she not only distils development these complexities, as faced by both modern scholars, but challenges traditional narrative, offering a ground-breaking history hospitals perspective. Watson’s in-depth textual analysis covers roughly one thousand years material, late Roman testamentary law Quia contingit (1317), so-called ‘Magna Carta hospital organisation’ (p.25), moving through an impressive range sources, including Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis, Carolingian charters capitularies, church councils canon law. Her close reading varied texts reveals how they were constructed...
Social history of medicine