Pain as Emotion: The Role of Emotional Pain in Fifteenth-Century Italian Medicine and Confession

Pain and the healing of pain are found at the basis of the two healing professions of the Middle Ages: medicine, responsible for the preservation of the body from illness, and the clergy which claimed authority over the medicine of the soul and the healing of sins. Both disciplines were concerned with defining pain and understanding its role in the process of healing, not merely for theoretical purposes but for the sake of practice as well. In this essay I focus on the notion of pain (dolor) as an emotion, pain of the soul (dolor animi) and the pain of remorse (contrition) within both contexts. These forms of pain present a substantial methodological issue regarding the definition of pain and its nature since they are found on the periphery of the established definition of pain. In an attempt to contribute to our understanding of this rather large problem, ethe chapter provides a detailed case study of the terminology of emotional pain employed by physicians and confessors, its theoretical underpinnings and its use for assertion of professional authority.