Did Religious Prayer Treat or Cure Medical Disease in Medieval Times?

The following opinion is from a medical and scientific observation.  Anyone seeking spiritual or religious guidance should seek answers from their own religious establishments.

The world's leading public service broadcaster, the BBC has stated that prayer was often used in medieval times for medical purposes. Others suggest prayer was commonly used as a method for healing. Some thought that pain or disease was a test of faith or a result from committing a sin, and prayer could improve their new medical issues through divine intervention. 

At the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris France, there are painting depicting stories of Jesus comforting and healing crowds of people.  Saint-Sulpice has a sign further explaining their paintings with quotes from religious sources that said as depicted below: If you know the disease, here you can entrust your state of health, lay down your burden. Be comforted... Jesus always paying great attention to the sick that He met in Israel. He suffered intensely during his Passion: He is beside you in sickness and suffering."  

Prayer is multifaceted process because there’s two distinct elements to it:

1. Calling from higher above.

2. Being physically restful, peaceful and meditative.

From a scientific and medical standpoint, prayer was probably very helpful in medieval population centuries for pain, disease and other medical purposes. That's because of its restful, meditative element, which has health benefits on its own. Rest is good for your health, period. Without rest, we succumb to fatigue, exhaustion and other compounding medical deterioration. Here are few recent medical studies which demonstrate the benefits of rest:

• A brief morning rest period benefits cardiac repair in pressure overload hypertrophy and postmyocardial infarction.

• Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST) in anxiety and depression.

• Investigating the concept of rest for research and practice.

Notre Dame Church of Paris' rose window is pictured below. Please imagine what it might have felt like to spend some time under these windows in restful silence or prayer at church.

When examining medieval lower and middle class populations, which ironically made up the majority of populations up to today and remains unchanged, we came to these conclusions:

Prior to advanced machinery development with industrialization, people usually worked from dawn until dusk, seven days per week. Transportation included walking, bicycling, horseback riding and other physical activities, sometimes for prolonged periods of time. Cooking required transporting wood, splitting, then creating and maintaining fire. You might have to pluck your own chicken. Fish for your own supper. Plant and harvest your own vegetables. Daily survival was a much larger process, and that’s before we get to the workplace to pay for everything hundreds of years ago. Work could involve swinging a tool to cut a field of hay, all day long. Think about that repetitive strain that would happen if someone did that, day after day, for up to 12 hours per day.

Below, St. Paul's National Cathedral of London is pictured.  Can you imagine what it was like to leave your dirt floor home with a straw roof and open windows to enter this religious establishment:

In prayer, we are often sitting, kneeling or standing with stillness. It can be extremely restful, especially when compared to one’s daily activities in medieval times.  Prayer allowed an individual to take a break from their daily physical exertion. And it's more than likely that constant daily exertion either caused or exacerbated certain medical issues. 

Today, in modern times, we have an entire industry called occupational therapy, which evaluates an individual’s situation to help prevent injury or correct poor personal mechanics to avoid greater harm.  Once injured, occupational therapy will help treat it with thermal therapies, exercises, massage therapy, improved routines and other measures. Occupational therapy can also provide appropriate adjustments for daily life or work if an individual is physically handicapped or unable to perform specific tasks due to physical disabilities. And while we did not have occupational therapy in the medieval centuries, there was prayer.

The gates and entries alone to religious houses or churches could leave someone awestruck by that alone. What would you think someone's focus would be when walking up to an establishment or entering through doors like these ones pictured below? The first picture is of a door that was preserved from the Church of the Virgin in St. Germain Paris from the 12th century.  This was the side entrance, where plants were intricately carved in stone material. Prior to modern day medicine, the use of plant material through aromatherapy practices was commonly used for healing.  We believe using depictions of plant material carved in stone or marble left subtle hints or suggestions of their healing properties being found inside. This door was preserved through history and is now on display at the Musee de Cluny in Paris France.

The next picture is the Hereford Screen made for the Hereford Church in England. It is adorned with passion flowers and currently sits in the Victoria & Albert Museum, aka known as the V & A in South Kensington, London, England. Passion flowers are another natural herbal botanical inscribed by the church. They are thought to be used to relieve pain and insomnia. 

This screen is now considered to be a fairly priceless work of art, so it was removed from the Hereford Church in 2000 to be preserved and was permanently installed at the V & A Museum where you can view it today. While most museums are free in London, most museums charge a fee to show their collection.  So, in retrospect, today we pay to view such incredible visual pieces; however, in medieval times, tenants of their lords would marvel at these amazing works of art with great hope for something beyond their grasp, and in many cases it was for wishful healing for themselves and loved ones.

The following are additional gates, entrances and facades of various religious houses which show great opulence if not power: 

Prayer in a religious establishment might have included physical contact with a staff member. They might have shaken hands, placed a hand on one’s shoulder or back or even hugged. We now scientific studies that show the power of touch:

1. Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity

2. Touch: An irreplaceable component of caring

3. Meta-Analysis: Touch Tied to Improved Mental, Physical Health

In terms of pain relief, spending time with a cognitive distraction such as prayer could help disrupt a pain cycle.  While pain might be felt in the back, leg or other place in the human body, pain is perceived in the brain. Pain is a cerebral reaction to issues such as soft tissue strain, overuse problems, physical misalignment, injury and other ailments. So when someone is thinking of something other than their pain, especially if they can find a place of positive feelings with rest, this could help minimize, diminish, reset and refocus an individual away from their pain and into a better mindful place.

Many places of worship for prayer have tremendous art installations for an individual to view or focus upon. While some religious artistic scenes portray demons and violence, the majority depict paths to peace. Viewing beautiful artwork can allow time for the human mind and body to experience meaningful rest. It’s a time to get out of your own head and think about something else. Those restful moments for an individual who's mentally taxed or physically overworked could prove beneficial, regardless of the religious component.

According to the American Psychological Association today, "chronic stress is linked to six leading causes of death including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide."

A common trend of art in churches is to show suffering with hope through grand paintings.  Below are two paintings hanging at the Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet Church in Paris, France. Both paintings depict suffering while one is receiving medical care on their death bed, while the other tells a story of how a woman was completely healed in a religious setting. 

Please take a moment to look at these images here with this article.  What do you feel, think or see when viewing them? Consider that some of these depict physical items that could stand 30+ feet tall.  Can you imagine what type of jaw dropping experience that might have brought a working individual who stares at the same stove or field every day?

So when considering the medieval and post-medieval population having disease, disabilities, or needing adjustments in their daily life to continue, think about the benefits of what some restful peace and touch might have provided to their hectic lives  Or the amount of restoration or rejuvenation a little bit of rest might provide. It’s no wonder that people returned to their daily activities with better ease after some restful peace at prayer. This is not to suggest spiritual intervention from a higher source did not occur during prayer or create benefit. This is a simple medical evaluation of how some time at prayer could contribute to better health from a scientific standpoint.

The pictures of church examples we provided in this article are some of the most well known in the world, including Westminster Abbey of London.  So while local churches amongst working folk would definitely be less grand, most churches do try and would love to emulate their grander counterparts.  In Paris, just across the very narrow Seine river is another church in Notre Dame's shadow. When looking at this for yourself in the pic below, you can see that the smaller, lesser known church is still quite grand when compared to Notre Dame Church of Paris in the background.

Now we do not recommend using religious items to bring about prayer or peace in your spa, massage therapy treatment rooms, health establishments or waiting areas. We are merely providing this opinion as a matter of observation, and to show some roots to our therapies today. Experiencing rest in your workspace, and then beyond your workplace can be achieved through other objects such as nature, plants, peaceful animal depictions and other artistic displays of non devotion. Please review our series of using plants and nature to build a spa or massage therapy establishment’s visuals for revitalizing a practice. It might be the key you need to tap into some additional therapy for both yourself and your clients.