Influenţe medicale în gândirea politică medievală şi premodernă din europa occidentală (secolele XII-XVII)
MEDICAL INFLUENCES IN WESTERN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN POLITICAL THOUGHT (TWELFTH − SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES)

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the most important thematic interactions between the medieval medicine and the political thought during the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. As the latter made an extensive use of metaphorical language, particularly with the analogies between the human body and the regnum/commonwealth, a common ground between medicine and political theory would not have been late to emerge. Three were the most important aspects of this interaction which the paper focuses on. First, the problem of the causes and the remedies of the afflictions (which the medical paradigm of that age considered to be linked), second, the connection between the physical health and spiritual health and, third, the crucial role of the heart within the medieval corporal paradigm, starting from the late XIIth century. The main sources which the political theory employed in this regard were Galen’s medical paradigm, which dominated the medical world during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era, and the equally influential Aristotelian physiology.

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