Juan Antonio Jiménez Sánchez: Body and spirit's health within Caesarius of Arles and Gregory of Tours thought

During Late Antiquity, and as it had happened in previous times, ill people from the humblest social classes went to healers who applied natural remedies based on popular knowledge, since it was sometimes difficult to go to professional doctors, either because of geographical distance or due to economic problems. However, ecclesiastical authorities always condemned these treatments because they considered them to be related to magic, whose practice was forbidden by the Church.In this paper, we study the writings of two authors in Late Antique Gaul regarding this topic: Caesarius of Arles (c. 470-542) and Gregory of Tours (538-594). We analyze their common religious convictions, such as the condemnation of every kind of popular healing practice or the idea that to deposit the faith of healing in it meant losing the salvation of the soul; health could only be recovered through prayer. And above all we address the differences in the discourse of these two authors, which show the evolution of ecclesiastical thought during the sixth century. Thus, whereas Caesarius believed in the effectiveness of such remedies (although he thought that the demon was after such cures), Gregory considered that popular remedies did not grant the cure in any case; moreover, for Caesarius the prayer for the health of the body had to be directly addressed to God, while Gregory believed that it should be addressed to saints inasmuch as they were divine intermediaries, which evidences the rise of the cult of the saints and the popularity of their miracles.