Jim Bugslag wrote:
>I *must* take issue with you here. ....in Bulteau's monograph.....
there was a permanent "nursing staff", the Filles des s.s. Lieux forts, who
even had accommodations in wood, housed in the crypt close to the Puits des
Saints Forts. Souchet's Histoire de Chartres is further cited.....la dicte
Grotte auroit ete qualifiee L'hospital du s. lieu
Fort, comme appert par un titre du 3 octobre 1403... Cet hopital était pour
recevoir les malades du feu sacre qui courait fort en ce tems-la, qu l'on
appelait la maladie des ardents.
Well, shucks, if you're going to start citing sources and documents, I'm gona
have to pick up my marbles and go home.
If I recall rightly (from a Jean Villette article somewhere?), these
Puits des Saints Forts got its names from some fellows who were martyred
during the 9th century siege of the city by the Norsemen... I think recounted
in the "chronicle" (the _Vetus Aganon_) of the monk Paul of St. Peter's in the
late 11th c. (which I hope to have up on my Chartres website sometime this
week, btw).
Or am I hopelessly confusing two or more different stories?
Anyway, let's see, Bulteau (mid-19th c.) is citing Souchet (early 18th
c), who obviously has before his eyes a titre of 1403 which seems to
conclusively confirm that the grotte sacré was a thriving hospital, with its
own staff, specializing, perhaps, in the treatment of the mal des
ardents--ergot poisoning (for which there was no medieval [or modern?] cure,
I'd think:
you got a good dose of it from eating mouldy grain in a bad crop year and your
extremities--especially nose, lips, ears and eyelids--became painfully
inflamed, then [I suppose], infected and gangreenous; blood poisoning set in
and you left the scene--all the while experiencing
powerful hallucinations from the LSD-like chemical given off as a by-product
of the mould/fungus.)
Under such lovely circumstances the intervention of a saint would have been
the ultimate in state-of-the-art, effective, psychosomatic healing--as in the
1120s account of Hugo Farsitus in Soissons--a major source of the 13th c.
Miracles de Notre-Dame of Walter of Coincy (or am I confused again?).
All the while, at Chartres, there's a perfectly good hospital just across the
street, documented from (I think) at least the 1134 fire (some source mentions
that it was destroyed--or was that the 1194 fire--or both?).
>Presumably, one could argue that such a description is more that of a
sanatorium or spa than a hospital, in modern terms, but I seem to
recall elsewhere reading of beds provided for the patients there, as
well as the accommodations of the "soeurs".
Or maybe the hotel-dieu took the non-special cases--no lepers (of course: they
went to the Grand-Beaulieu well outside of town); no ergotists (to the
specialists at the Puits); just your garden variety sick and dying--and
probably only the urban poor (surely the well-to-do would have been nursed at
home?).
Okay.
I yield; though "spa" seems a bit of a stretch--how would *you* like to live
in the salubrious environment like the crypt on a permanent basis?
It's a bloody damp *refrigerator* down there in the winter (and not much
better in the summer.
Best from here,
Christopher
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