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6 - Curing Madness and Mental Disturbances : Religious Healing Activities in Early Modern Swedish Local Communities
- Edited by Mari Eyice, Stockholms Universitet, Charlotta Forss, Stockholms Universitet
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- Book:
- Health and Society in Early Modern Sweden
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 16 April 2024
- Print publication:
- 01 March 2024, pp 125-150
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Summary
Abstract
The chapter discusses how religion and religious practices were used in healing madness in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Sweden. According to holistic ideas on health, true faith demonstrated via religious practice was vital both for recovering from illnesses and for upholding and improving one's health. The afflicted themselves, and their kin, as well as parish communities and clergy sought alleviation from mental disturbances through prayer, hymn singing and other religious rituals. These spiritual healing practices that were in line with the era's orthodox Lutheranism were encouraged by medical and church authorities. Local clergy assisted in this process, by counselling, visitations, and organising communal prayers in churches. Families and other local communities could also participate in the healing process.
Keywords: history of madness, history of insanity, religious healing, lived religion, mental health care, early modern Sweden
Introduction
The chapter examines mental health care in early modern Swedish local communities, and in particular the religious activities that were aimed at finding cures for or alleviating madness and mental disturbances. After briefly providing background about the role of religion in medicine and healing in the early modern culture, the chapter discusses the spiritual healing practices carried out at the local level, in particular by local clergy and the rural lay communities, in early modern Sweden (including Finland) during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (c. 1600s–1730s). This time frame covers the era when the Swedish Realm was at its largest and the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy. This period is characterised as a time when religion was an integral part of medicine. Moreover, this is a time when many new natural-scientific and medical ideas, and the professionalisation and ‘secularisation’ of medicine, were only slowly contributing to the healing practices in the northern periphery of Europe.
A court record from southwestern Finland from 1700 offers a starting point and a good example about the ways religion, and churchmen, were involved in healthcare. Around the year 1680 Brita, a soldier's widow in her late fifties, lost her mind, or started suffering from an undetermined ‘weakness in the head’ (Swe. hufwud swaghet).
8 - Survival in a Hostile Agrarian Regime: Landless and Semi-Landless Households in Seventeenth-Century Sweden and Finland
- Edited by Christine Fertig, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany, Richard Paping, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands, Henry French, University of Exeter
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- Book:
- Landless Households in Rural Europe, 1600-1900
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 October 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 July 2022, pp 196-219
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Summary
This chapter discusses the existence and conditions of non-landed households in rural Sweden (including Finland) in the seventeenth century. This heterogeneous group encompassed both landless and semi-landless people, from relatively affluent, independent artisan families to destitute beggars. Some had access to land, albeit little, and should be referred to as semi-landless or land-poor. In the administrative thinking of the time, however, they were all part of the non-landed1 population, that is, those who did not contribute to the state economy by paying taxes based on their holdings. What united them was that they had no or very little control over land.
As we will show below, the story of the Swedish non-landed population in the seventeenth century is one full of contradictions. On the one hand, hostile attitudes to households and individuals without land were typical and widespread in this regime. On the other hand, the economy depended on their labour. Repeated ordinances declared that lodgers should not be tolerated, that cottages and crofts were to be torn down and that temporary labour was forbidden; yet lodgers, cottages, crofts and casual labour abounded in rural Sweden and Finland. We investigate how this was possible, and how – given the many restrictions and official attitudes – households with little or no land were able to survive. Thus, the chapter contributes to the discussion of ‘pauper agency’ and what people on the margins did to survive. In general, the historiography of the European poor has witnessed a shift from attention to structures, such as the extent of poverty and the institutions of poor relief, to an interest in agency and coping strategies.
We first introduce the agrarian system of early modern Sweden and the non-landed groups within it, then describe the hostile environment in which they had to navigate and the laws and underlying interests that created it. We show that the numbers of landless and semi-landless households in seventeenth-century Sweden were substantial, despite regulations. Finally, we discuss the opportunities that nonetheless were at hand and how non-landed households exploited these.