ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the religious and magical models of disease that have been offered in the past, and discusses the ways in which they interacted with one another and with 'medical' models of disease. It investigates two roles played by religious and magical models of disease. First, religion and magic could offer broad explanations for why diseases existed, and why they afflicted some people and not others. Second, religion and magic offered a range of cures for disease, which could be used alongside or instead of medical treatments. The chapter explains some of the religious and magical cures, and also explores the ways in which they interact with one another and with 'medical' cures. For medieval and early-modern Christian theologians and other educated clergy, for example, the difference between a religious and a magical cure depended on the source of power which lay behind that cure.
