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Music, Imagination and Experience in the Medieval World

Medieval Music: Chant as Cure and Miracle by Professor Christopher Page. As the monks were singing in a French abbey of the twelfth century, a cripple, who had crawled into the church suddenly, began to cry aloud and to extend his contorted limbs, 'and thus he that came into the church on four legs departed on two'. It has been generally forgotten that men and women in the Middle Ages believed that the singing of monks and clergy during worship had the ability to produce sudden and dramatic cures: the music entered the ear as a healing spiritual balm that could hasten results beyond the reach of any contemporary physician. (from gresham.ac.uk)

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