Conclusion

A study of twenty miracle collections from twelfth-century England points to a complex hagiographical representation of mental illness in which religious and medical understandings of madness combine.

A significant finding of the study is that demons are not always quite as real as they at first appear in these accounts. Possession narratives are notably less dependent on the actual presence of demons than in earlier centuries, and medical readings of many supernatural entities in the narratives challenge the reality of demons, and instead reveal them to be metaphors or symptoms of disease. However, even if we take each ‘demonic’ reference at face value, it is still the case that less than half of all mental disorders in the texts are associated with demons. Overall, twelfth-century hagiographers appear just as inclined to explain mental disturbance in natural terms as in super­natural ones.

Nonetheless, the sources surveyed do suggest a chronological pattern, with natural explanations for madness increasing towards the end of the twelfth century as supernatural ones decrease.^{[705] [706] The gradual medicalization of men­tal illness in twelfth-century hagiography can be understood within the con­text of wider cultural and religious changes often labelled under the umbrella term ‘twelfth-century renaissance’. Perhaps most obviously, the twelfth century witnessed the beginning of a flood of translated medical texts into western Europe which inevitably led to a greater awareness of, and familiar­ity with, Galenic medicine in English ecclesiastical institutions.}

It is important to note, however, that hagiographers did not completely dis­card the traditional ‘demonic’ script in the face of these new cultural trends. Stories of demons and incubi may have been reshaped here and there for twelfth-century tastes, but they nonetheless retained their basic ingredients and meaning. Demons, as we know, were to rise to greater prominence—and acquire a different significance—when demonology turned its attention to witchcraft in the centuries to come.