Healing Options during the Plague: Survivor Stories from a Fourteenth-Century Canonization Inquest

Witness testimonies in the 1363 canonization inquest for Countess Delphine de Puimchel help us explore differing reactions to the first two waves of plague in 1348 and 1361, the diverse social and healing networks available to the sick, and the importance of affect in the healing process. Every witness in the inquest had lived through both the 1348 and 1361 epidemics. Their testimonies show that sufferers actively sought out healing even when they feared that none existed, healing practitioners continued to care for the sick through both waves of epidemic, and emotion played an important role in sufferers’ healing. Their language allows us to look at the interaction between miracle and medicine, the interaction of healing practitioners, and the expectations of sufferers during severe epidemics in the later Middle Ages