DIPLOMA
. Under Roman law, most transactions had required a written record, or diploma. These
records became much less common in the early Middle Ages, and the carta became not a
binding legal instrument so much as a record or reminder that an agreement had taken
place. Almost all diplomas that survive from before the end of the 12th century are from
ecclesiastical archives. The growing literacy of the 12th century led to a great increase in
the number of written records. By the early 13th century, kings and popes were keeping
chancery records of the diplomas they issued.
Constance B.Bouchard
Bullough, Donald A., and R.L.Storey, eds. The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of
Kathleen Major. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.
Clanchy, Michael T. From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1979.
van Caenegem, R.C. Guide to the Sources of Medieval History. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978.
DISEASES
. A general assessment of health problems in medieval France awaits systematic collation
of written and physical evidence. At present, acute fatal diseases, with the exception of
epidemics, as well as ailments considered minor or inevitable (e.g., measles in childhood
or rheumatism in old age) are overshadowed by severe chronic illnesses. In learned
writings on medical practice and in popular traditions of saints’ cults, fevers predominate.
This was not a mere catchall of symptoms but a true category of diseases whose essence
was a process of “overheating” and whose branches stretched from ague and influenza to
meningitis and typhoid. Professional medicine and folk religion diverged in their ranking
of a second group, with digestive complaints more common for patients and obstetrical
problems most baffling for physicians.
Of the maladies that eluded human treatment, some gained special notoriety under the
name of a patron healer. Regular references to le mal St. Quentin or St. Eutrope indicate
that dropsy, a form of edema often caused by malnutrition, was widespread. More
notorious was epilepsy, le grand mal or le mal St. Jean or St. Eloi (Leu, Loup); in spite of
the belief that it was both contagious and mental, the falling sickness was often feigned
by beggars. Disorders with a relatively low profile in our principal sources of information
include such modern threats as cancer, cardiac impairment, and even tuberculosis, which
scattered evidence suggests may have been a most insidious and particularly French
scourge. Far more than a respiratory affliction of the poor, it caused a host of other ills
ranging from insanity to sterility, it cut short the career of the great physician-surgeon
Henri de Mondeville, and it plagued the house of Valois.
Perhaps the most historically important disease is smallpox, of which one epidemic
accompanied the Huns ca. 450, another sapped the Merovingians (according to Gregory
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