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> I think ergotism was called St Anthony's fire..? > Best wishes for a happy 1999 > > Marija-Ana > And best wishes to you, Marija-Ana. Correct on St Antony, and can you or someone else on the list put me wise here: Do we know if the Order of St Antony of Vienne became involved in the treatment of ergotism coincidentally, by force of circumstance, or had Antony been invoked for skin ailments before the translation of relics to La Motte? It does seem that we're moving into an interesting nexus here: 'bodily' ailments x 'pains in the head', since torment by devils (and hence exorcism) was a principal motif of the Antony story. The same nexus occurs with Bartholomew, specifically involving skin loss. Yet another example (one of many, perhaps?) came to my attention yesterday as a result of a Belgian correspondent's interest in 'St' Job. In North Brabant he was invoked against skin disease (those pustular images of Job on his dunghill in the marvellous Bedevaartplaatsen gazetteer), but compare this entry in a Luxembourg national museum catalogue: 'Au Kahlenburg il fut venere contre les maux de tete, les maladies cerebrales et les ulceres'. Incidentally, my first reaction to the Hildegard images was: 'Kabbalah'. Miriam (Gill) tells me this connection has been made somewhere along the line but she couldn't put her finger on it there and then. Anyone got the reference? Graham Jones Leicester %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%