The Life and Legend of Giles of Santarém, Dominican Friar and Physician (d.1265): A Perspective on Medieval Portugal

unpublished PhD Thesis, St Andrews, 2000

The subject of my research, Giles of Santarém, was a friar and physician who trained in Paris, wrote medical recipes, and made translations of medical works from Arabic to Latin. Through an exploration of Giles’ career it is possible to reconstruct the medical and intellectual society of thirteenth-century Portugal, a period crucial in the development of what was then a new kingdom. The fact that Giles was a leading Dominican friar, later revered as a healing saint, also allows one to analyse the relationship between religion and medicine in the Middle Ages. I found this relationship to be a more symbiotic and mutually constructive one than is sometimes believed to be the case.