From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century)

Nelide Romeo, Olivier Gallo, Giuseppe Tagarelli

The relationship between spirituality, religion and medicine has been recognized since antiquity. Despite large differences in their history, society, economy and cultures human communities shared a common belief that spirituality and religion played an important role in the healing of diseases. The study of religious remedies used by Italian folk medicine in order to treat diseases was based on a review of literature sources compiled between the late nineteenth century and the early to mid twentieth century. This approach lead to the unearthing of heterogeneous healing methods that have been divided into different categories: Saints, Pilgrimages, Holy Water/Blessed Oil, Blessings, Religious Objects, Contact, Signs, Formulas and The Religious Calendar. Some of these practices, partly still performed in Italy, are a part of the landscape of the official Catholic Church, others come out of a process of syncretism between the Catholic Religion, the magic world and pre-Christian rituals. The vastus corpus of religious remedies, highlighted in the present work, shows the need for spirituality of the sick and represent a symbolic framework, that works as a filter, mediates, containing the pain that constantly fills everyone's lives in remote ages even in the third millennium. All of this confirms how important the health-workers know and interpret these existential needs from anthropological and psychological points of view.