Meg Leja’s first book is an innovative foray into medical theories about the workings of the human body in the Carolingian period and the ways in which this branch of knowledge informed contemporary debates about the state of the soul and the reform of Christian society. Central to her study is the examination of dozens of medical miscellanies produced in the ninth century, which preserved ancient and late antique treatises, recipes, prognostic guidelines and dietary recommendations for the sick. According to Leja, medicine was not an isolated field in the age of Charlemagne. Rather, she argues that the care of the body should be understood as part of the broader project of reform in early medieval society, where medical literature ‘intersected with theological concerns and imperial ambitions’ (p. 10).

Embodying the soul comprises three parts, each with multiple chapters. Part i presents three chapters that explore the relationship between the body and the soul in Carolingian thought. Monastic treatises about the soul composed for elite audiences show that there was no consensus about its nature in this period. Like contemporary medical texts, these treatises wrestled with the notion that the soul clung to the physical body yet remained distinct from it (ch. i). In advisory literature for lay readers, the motif of conflict between body and soul retreated before ‘an ideal of measured conduct’ (p. 64) that recognised the body’s role in the perfection of the individual Christian (ch. ii). Knowledge of the body’s operations were not self-evident, however. According to ninth-century medical literature, its interior workings were hidden, so there was a lingering ambiguity about the location of the soul in the body cavity and its relation to physical symptoms of illness. The use of the terms virtus and vitium to describe the power of remedies and maladies ‘forged a common link between medical and theological thought’ (p. 86).

Part ii examines ideas about medical intervention and its practioners in the Carolingian age. With a focus on the Lorsch Arzneibuch (c. 800), a manuscript of treatises and recipes prefaced with a Christian defence of medicine, Leja shows how ninth-century thinkers legitimised the practice of medicine by grounding it in Scripture, distinguished their therapeutic arts from the practice of magic and incorporated treatments of the body into Christianised schemes of classical knowledge (ch. iv). The emergence of medicine as a Christian disciple entailed the refashioning of its practioners (medici) as exemplary figures who played a valuable role in Carolingian society (ch. v).

Part iii concludes the book with two chapters (chs vi–vii) that braid medical practice with other systems of knowledge current in the Carolingian world. Turning her attention to manuscript miscellanies of therapeutic texts, Leja examines how bloodletting guides, dietary calendars and prognostic treatises express ideas also found in contemporary computistical, astronomical and legal treatises, thus revealing ‘associations among bodily health, temporal calculations, and cosmic structures in the minds of Carolingian elites’ (pp. 193–4). Further comparisons between medical literature and moral treatises reveal that both genres encouraged eating and drinking in moderation for its beneficial effects on the body and the soul. The readership of these materials suggests that lay people were in fact familiar with medical regimes long considered to have been in the purview of monks alone.

Embodying the soul succeeds in its aim of showing the cross-pollination of medical theories and practices with Carolingian debates about the body, the soul and the body politic in the ninth century. Leja brings to light dozens of early medieval miscellanies containing hundreds of curative treatises and recipes, makes the case for their impact on Carolingian moral and theological discourse and charts how applied medicine emerged over the course of the ninth century as a sacred art with physical and spiritual benefits. Scholars of Carolingian Europe and the history of medicine will discover in this book a new paradigm for thinking about Mönchsmedizin and its impact on intellectual currents in early medieval society.