A detailed exploration of the remedies and methods used by the healers who journeyed along with the Crusading knights
- Presents a traditional “cure-all” or leechbook of the ailments the Crusaders would have encountered and the remedies their mediciners would have employed, including recipes for many cures and instructions
- Includes a comprehensive herbal, listing all the medicinal plants and materials needed to make the remedies, potions, elixirs, and unctions of the cure-all
- Details the author’s travels in the steps of the Crusader physicians where he met with healers still employing the mediciners’ practices
During the Crusades, chivalric knightly orders, such as the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, brought along monastic mediciners to treat the sick and wounded. These mediciners not only employed the leading cures of medieval Europe but also learned new methods from the local folk-healers and Arabic healing traditions they encountered on their journeys.
Presenting a traditional “cure-all” or leechbook of the Crusader physicians, Jon Hughes shares a comprehensive encyclopedia of the ailments the Crusaders would have encountered and the remedies their mediciners would have employed. He details recipes for many cures and a range of magico-medical applications such as charms, spells, enchantments, and amulets used to address the new illnesses of strange and foreign lands. He includes a detailed and comprehensive herbal, listing all the plants and materials needed to make and administer the remedies of the cure-all. He also details his travels in the steps of the Crusader physicians throughout Poland, the Czech Republic, Malta, Morocco, and the island of Rhodes where he met with healers still following this healing path who shared their practices with him.
Revealing how the healers of the Crusades helped elevate Western medical knowledge through the integration of wisdom from their Middle Eastern counterparts, Hughes shows how their legacy continues through the many effective remedies and healing modalities still in use today.
About the Author
Jon G. Hughes, author of
Celtic Sex Magic, is part of a lineage of druids that has been practicing for five generations in a remote area of Wales. He is now teaching the tradition at his home in western Ireland and gives workshops and seminars throughout Europe under his Welsh name of Cynon. He is the director of the Irish Centre for Druidic Practices.
Industry Reviews
“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 author’s 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. Hughes’s rediscovery of the many medicinal plants and spiritual healings is a journey of enlightenment. It’s 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.”
