Verbal Medicines: The Curative Power of Prayer and Invocation in Early English Charms

In one of the charms at the center of Leslie K. Arnovick's Verbal Medicines, instructions tell the charmer to write passages from Scripture onto a paten, then wash them off with water. The charmer should add wine, have Masses sung over the liquid, and follow those with a distinctly Christian range of recitations: five different psalms, a Creed, the Gloria, litanies, and the Pater Noster. Clearly, religion was central to the performance of this charm, as it is to other early English examples. But why were these psalms chosen, and why these ritual actions? This is the question Arnovick seeks to answer in Verbal Medicines, which asks exactly how and why early medieval healing charms used prayers and invocations. Arnovick argues that the verbal utterances in charms, like their material ingredients, are prescribed “carefully and judiciously” (p. 2) and with an eye to their interactions. The choice of utterance follows logical patterns, and the utterances function as powerful medicines.The first four chapters of the book each focus on a different element of Christian practice, showing how charms incorporate both words and actions from the liturgy in order to evoke the healing and protective associations of various liturgical rites. The four areas of Arnovick's focus are the sacrament of baptism, the praying of Psalms, the invocation of the Virgin, and the Visitation of the Sick. These are not intended to exhaust the ways in which areas of the liturgy have been recontextualized in the charms, but to serve as representative examples of verbal medicines drawn from Christian practice. In each of these chapters, Arnovick identifies words and actions in the charms that might allude to the liturgical ritual under discussion. She argues that in using these words and actions, the charm evokes the ritual for its participants, allowing the charm to channel the ritual's power for healing purposes. The final two chapters examine the ways in which charms might combine allusions to multiple liturgical rituals, as well as the theoretical implications of this repurposing of liturgical material within a nonliturgical structure.Arnovick's approach to the charms is centered on their status as oral performance. The ritual of the charm, she argues, constructs a “performance arena” (p. 13) which would be recognized by the participants and which foregrounds particular types of significance. The charm is therefore understood not solely through its words and gestures, but also through the cultural contexts and social norms that allow its participants to place it within a recognized genre. Within that genre, the charm would function whether or not its references to the liturgy were recognized by charmers or their patients. As Arnovick notes, recognition of direct liturgical references, as well as more subtle allusions, would have depended on the type of ritual evoked and on the level of each observer's familiarity with its specific manifestations. Lay and clerical audiences, for example, might have experienced a charm's allusions differently.In order to make its argument, the volume brings together discussion of the charms and their performance with detailed information about the liturgical practices of the early English church. The interdependence of charms and liturgy is clear, and the explanations of early English religious practice provide rich and valuable context. At times, however, the nuance of the liturgical context makes it difficult to see exactly which components of the charm evoked what. In the chapter on baptism, for example, the Creed is treated as “obviously baptismal” (p. 34)—a formula whose utterance, as “an essential component of Baptism” (p. 35), inevitably pointed back to that rite. But the Creed was also a statement of faith that all Christians were expected to know (p. 36), one that regularly appeared in the Mass (p. 38) and was recommended for daily repetition by Augustine (p. 47) and for protection during travel by Ælfric (p. 48). Given the expectation that the Creed would be frequently repeated, it is not at first clear why it should be understood as alluding to Baptism rather than to its use in other non-baptismal contexts. Only towards the middle of the chapter is it clarified that the invocation of baptism comes from “the minimal presence of Creed and water” (p. 52)—although in one of the charms evoking baptism, water is not explicitly present (p. 59). Arnovick argues that charm composers chose from a range of texts and gestures that could invoke baptism (or other aspects of the liturgy), with the presence of each allusion to a particular rite strengthening and substantiating the others. This is a plausible and persuasive explanation which could have been introduced earlier to help explain the varied nature of the charms considered alongside each liturgical practice.Over the course of the book, the argument persuades through its repeated examples of allusions and references. While the allusions in an individual charm may be subtle, the chapters repeatedly demonstrate similar patterns: charms drawing from liturgical formulas, rituals, and gestures in ways that are related to the situations they are intended to remedy. This argument seems strongest when considering the psalms. The psalms that appear in the Old English charms are not the ones that would typically be repeated at the canonical hours, but ones that have to do with deliverance from enemies or that beseech God's aid. They therefore seem to have been chosen for their ability to refer simultaneously to eternal salvation and to earthly healing or protection from supernatural foes. This provides a clear example of the recontextualization of liturgical material for the context of the charms.Arnovick is by no means the first scholar to note parallels and analogues between early English charms and early English liturgy, and in the liveliest parts of the book, she joins an ongoing debate about the relationship between the two. Her book explicitly contradicts the argument of Ciaran Arthur's ‘Charms’, Liturgies, and Secret Rites in Early Medieval England (2018), which holds that the ‘charms’ were seen as Christian rituals within a diverse range of mainstream liturgical practices. By contrast, Arnovick sees the charms as invoking the liturgy while also distancing themselves from it: they not only borrow its forms but adapt them. For example, she notes that the charms apply exorcistic formulae not to the patient but to intervening objects such as herbs or salves, that symbolic texts are reinterpreted as literal, and that the charms mix ecclesiastical gestures and utterances with folk-traditional ones. In her view, the contents of the charm may be drawn from ecclesiastical texts, but the way the charm works stems from the system of oral performance and verbal healing. Moving liturgical phrases into this new context repurposes them for use outside the institution of the Church. This perspective helps to advance our understanding of the complex, blurred, and porous area in which religion, medicine, and charm practice overlap.This is a readable and useful book, accompanied with tables that set out the relationships between charms and specific ecclesiastical elements appearing within them. Old English is presented in the original language and in translation; Latin is usually translated, although I noted occasional omissions (e.g. pp. 121, 122, and 168). Arnovick's arguments will be useful to scholars working on folk traditions, religious practice, and cultures of healing in early medieval England, as well as those interested in the power of allusion more generally.