Old English medicine, reflected in the totality of medical texts compiled in Anglo-Saxon, serves as a unique synthesis of early medieval cultural and religious ideas. The herbalist Leechbook III is one of the most representative sources on the history of Old English medicine. The analysis of the text allows us to highlight the principles that formed the basis of medical practice in Anglo-Saxon England. Through the prism of this medical essay, the researcher also gets the opportunity to look at the features of the religious worldview of the Anglo-Saxons.

In Russian historiography, the biography of Arnaldus de Villa Nova begins with the words “doctor and alchemist”, and then all the arguments go into myth-making, although Arnald’s writings are very well studied at the modern scientific level, but are inaccessible to reading due to the language barrier. An accurate understanding of the biography of Arnaldus de Villa Nova is important for researchers of the history of medicine, Medieval historians and historians of Church history, since the activity of this man influenced significant events of the late XIII — early XIV centuries, and he is known to the Russian-speaking environment only by the verses attributed to him.

This article is devoted to biographies of doctors contained in the Infernal Dictionary of Collin de Plancy, and narrative topoi formed around the figure of a doctor in the historical past. One of the stable attributes that place biographies of doctors in the context of the history of the Church is the statement of tense and conflict-rich interaction, which, however, cannot be assessed unambiguously as a confrontation. Another dimension of the texts under consideration is their transformation under the influence of the compiler’s conversion and the “сhristianization” of the Infernal Dictionary in the 1840s. The peculiarity of the approach of this study is the view of the figure of a doctor as a narrative construct, considered from the point of view of its internal logic, and not in relation to historical authenticity or unreliability. The aim of the study is to localize further stable combinations of narrative elements and attributes correlated with the figure of a doctor, and to formulate possible topics and disciplinary frameworks for further research of the problem, which is currently not described in Russian-language science. The material on which this article is written is also presented to the Russian-speaking scientific community for the first time, there are also practically no publications devoted to it in the Western tradition. The method used in the study is a qualitative analysis of the text following the example of field ethnographic studies with elements of quantitative methods.

The article discusses the miracles of healing from the plague in Moscow in the middle of the XVII century, attributed to the Mother of God of Georgia. The circumstances of bringing icon to Moscow are analyzed, the sources talking about the most famous miracle that occurred from the shrine in the city are compared. The author assesses the significance of the miracles that occurred in Moscow stricken by the plague in the distribution of lists from the icon, including those famous as miraculous. The fate of the icon after returning from Moscow, its stay in the churches of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogor in fulfillment of the desire of believers to pray to the miraculous image is briefly analyzed.

The article reviews the idea of cure or healing in Late antiquity, which was accepted by Christian tradition. According to this tradition, the healing effect is emerging simultaneously both in body and soul, and the very idea of cure or healing falls into spiritual dimension. In mediaeval Christianity this concept of healing takes its form as folklore-medicine way of theurgy, or it appears as a pure allegory or symbolic interpretation in a miracle-play, or, in alchemy. This essay is trying to discuss the early Christian concept of healing or cure from the later Christian humanistic point of view, which was presented in Hugo Rahner’s book Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, first published in 1945.

The article presents a translation of an anonymous treatise De adventu Medici ad aegrotum in Russian, the origin of which is attributed to the Salerno School of Medicine. Using the example of the treatise, it is possible to determine what characteristic the doctors of the XIII century attached to the disease, and the tasks of the doctor’s craft.

The philosophy of healing the body is based on an understanding of nature as an instrument created by God, and not on the influence of divine power (will), which makes a decision about healing in each individual case (individually for each patient). The origin of the disease of the body is considered a consequence of some kind of influence on substance, an overabundance of substance affects nature, which resists and strives for the return of balance and its integrity.