Jon G. Hughes - The Healing Practices of the Knights Templar and Hospitaller: Plants, Charms, and Amulets of the Healers of the Crusades

For Iris Elizabeth Gallagher

THE HEALING PRACTICES OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR AND HOSPITALLER

The Healing Practices of the Knights Templar and Hospitaller by Jon G. Hughes is a well-researched and fascinating look into the healing practices and related medicines of the early Crusaders. What makes this book all the more intriguing is the authors personal journey of discovery, tracing the footsteps of the Crusaders across southern Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean as they made their way to the Holy Land and, hopefully, back again. Jon G. Hughess rediscovery of the many medicinal plants and spiritual healings is a journey of enlightenment. Its also a story of East meets West, in that the warrior-monks adopted many of the Eastern healing practices and carried them back to western Europe. In many cases this knowledge and understanding is still in use some eight hundred years later. I have been waiting for a book of this nature for a very long time.

WILLIAM F. MANN, SUPREME GRAND MASTER, SOVEREIGN GREAT PRIORY OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR OF CANADA AND AUTHOR OF THE LAST REFUGE OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

A truly fascinating investigation into medieval medicine, exploring how the European Crusaders learned of cures and remedies for a variety of aliments from the very people who were meant to be their enemies: the inhabitants of the Holy Land. A wonderful read, well researched, and easy to follow.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS, AUTHOR OFTHE TEMPLARS AND THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

A treasure trove of historic herbal research and lore awaits the readera comprehensive herbal, a traditional cure-all of medieval ailments and remedies, and a travelogue of the authors journeys. This book is a useful historical addition to any modern herbalists library and for all interested in medieval healing methods; medicine and the monastic and military orders; cross-cultural and interfaith exchanges of unusual cures, botanicals, and specialist herbal lore; the key role of field hospitals on a battlefield; and historic healing recipes ranging from ales, ointments, oils, and much more. Join in the footsteps of the monastic mediciners, Crusader physicians, and the healers of the Crusades and explore this texte vivant, a living text, of herbal lore for our time. Recommended!

KAREN RALLS, PH.D.,HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR OF KNIGHTS TEMPLAR ENCYCLOPEDIA AND MEDIEVAL MYSTERIES

An illuminating and well-researched insight into the medicinal knowledge of the Crusader knights, providing an excellent overview of the period as well as the authors detailed account of his journey across parts of southern Europe and North Africa in search of the remnants of the Templars. The books largest section, the cures of the time, provides a sometimes gruesome but fascinating window into their practices. An essential book for those interested in the synthesis of medieval, lost Greco-Roman, and Arab-Turkish ideas that preempted the Renaissance in Europe.

LUKE EASTWOOD, AUTHOR OFTHE DRUID GARDEN AND THE DRUIDS PRIMER

Note to the Reader

This book is intended as an informational guide. The remedies, approaches, and techniques described herein are meant to supplement, and not to be a substitute for, professional medical care or treatment. They are wholly dependent on the correct identification of the botanicals mentioned, a thorough understanding of the potency and dosage of each remedy, and correct diagnosis of the ailment being treated. As such, they should not be used to treat a serious ailment without prior consultation with a qualified health care professional.

Contents

Preface

I have always considered the writing of each of my books as a journey of exploration and discovery. This book, more than any other, has been the living proof of this notion.

Researching the content has indeed been an exploration of the people, cultures, and events that defined much of the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, the physical journey of my adventure has taken me to the principal locations around the Mediterranean Sea and beyond that influenced the use of botanicals and other cures in the restorative and preventive medicine of the age.

The project originally evolved from both the research I had carried out previously in preparation for earlier publications and a lifetimes experience in ethnomedicine and arcane healing lore, together with a deep personal interest in the events of the Crusades, the Crusading knights, and the medicinal physic gardens of the monastic orders who accompanied the knights on their journeys to the Holy Land. For some this meant an expedition of a few months, but for others it involved the work of a lifetime.

I set myself the objective of researching and compiling more than a simple herbal of the time, but rather a book of healing, similar to ones that, for all intents and purposes, would have been among the possessions of the mediciner-monks who attended and cared for the brave knights and their entourage on their journeys.

In todays world it may well be good practice for us to add a few sticking plasters, painkillers, and sunblock to our suitcase when we plan to travel abroad, but few of us would consider including cures for elfshot, remedies for witlessness of the mind, or unctions to cure a blow from something iron to our traveling accessories. However, these and many more are referred to as priorities in the important medical texts of the time.

In many cases the remedies are as intriguing as the ailments they are intended to cure, with ingredients including vixen fat, pigs dung, bile of toad, snail slime, and a good number of psychotropic botanicals (which Im sure would have been well received), often accompanied by incantations and spells, charms, and amulets. This was a time when magic and medicine were one and the same thing. Each was intended to return the bodys humors to their natural balance and restore the patients health.

Unsurprisingly, many of these cures, when examined in todays scientific laboratories, consist of beneficial ingredients that may now be seen in modern-day medicines, and it is fair to say that through a process of trial and error (life and death), these ancient physicians arrived at many useful and effective cures, though they would not have understood why or how they actually worked.

My progress through the many ancient herbals and manuscripts brought me to a point where I felt I should turn my attention to discovering whether any of this arcane tradition is still practiced in todays culture, and how much of this owes its development to the learning and knowledge of those Crusading monastic adventurers. So I turned my attention from the dusty herbals and manuscripts that had preoccupied me for many months to the technology of the twenty-first century and the internet with the intention of making contact with any practitioner who may still work in the traditional methods that would have been available to the Crusading knights and their mediciners. The results led me to four years of intermittent travel and many months of unraveling the information I had accumulated in order to complete this book. I have kept in contact with many of the fascinating individuals I met and remain intrigued by the various cultures I came into contact with. It is indeed a very diverse world we live in. Some of these ethno-mediciners have visited me at my home in the southwest of Ireland and are equally fascinated with our Gaelic tradition and Druidic heritage.