The king's evil.

  • Crawfurd, Raymond Henry Payne, Sir, 1865-1938.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The king's evil. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    of healing by royal hands. Helgald the monk, writing a few years after the death of Robert the Pious (996- 1031 a. d.), with whom he was contemporary, depicts the cures wrought by this king in the following passages : Nam ipsa terra multos habens infirmos et praecipue leprosos, hos vir Dei non abhorruit, quia in Scripturis Sanctis legit Dominum Christum multoties in speciem leprosorum hospitio susceptum. Ad hos avida mente properans et intrans, manu propria dabat denariorum summam, et ore proprio figens eorum manibus oscula, in omnibus Deum collaudabat. . . . Tantam quippe gratiam in medendis corporibus perfecto viro contulit divina virtus, ut sua piissima manu infirmis locum tangens vulneris, et illis imprimens signum sanctae Crucis, omnem auferret ab eis dolorem infirmitatis.1 [For this land being full of sick folk and chiefly lepers, this man of God did not abhor them, for he read in Holy Scripture that the Lord Christ was often enter- tained under the guise of a leper. Hastening eagerly to them, he would enter their abodes, and give them with his own hand a sum of pence, and pressing kisses on their hands with his lips praised God in each cure. . . . Such power of bodily healing did the goodness of God bestow on this perfect man, that the touch of his holy hand on the sore places of sick men, together with the imprint of the sign of the Holy Cross, took away from them all the suffering of their sickness.] From these words it is clear that Robert the Pious cured sick persons by touch, but we have no sufficient indication of the nature of their sickness. The com- plete dissociation in the text of the two records, and the difference of procedure adopted by the King, show that some other disease or diseases than leprosy are signified. Indeed, all the evidence of the period suggests that, at first, kings bestowed their healing touch on several diseases, and that royal specialism is of later date. 1 ' Helgaldi Floriacensis Monachi Epitoma Vitae Roberti Regis,' in Bouquet's Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum Scriptores, ed. 1760, vol. x. p. 98.