Caring by the Hours : The Psalter as a Gendered Healthcare Technology

Abstract

This essay explores a psalter, Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université MS 431, as a tool for the construction and transmission of women’s therapeutic knowledge. It places the psalter in its institutional context at the beguinage of St. Christopher’s, which maintained relationships with hospitals and a leprosarium in Liège. Given its context in feminine circuits of care, the essay argues that several features of this psalter, supported by comparative evidence from other contemporaneous psalters from the region, indicate the ways that beguines incorporated prayer and liturgical performance into their practice of daily caregiving.