The ARC Centre for Excellence for the History of the Emotions, presents:

“The Mental Dimension of Pain in the Life and Writings of Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576),” Dr Anna Corrias (Princeton University)

“Leading the way to Pain: The Cure of Contrition in Manipulus Curatorum,”  Dr Naama Cohen-Hanegbi (Tel Aviv University)

When: Monday, September 28, 12-2pm
Location: Rogers Room, Woolley Building, The University of Sydney
Enquiries: craig.lyons@sydney.edu.au

This paper will look at the relationship between physical and mental pain in the life and writings of Girolamo Cardano, one of the most fascinating figures of the Italian Renaissance. Physician and natural philosopher — among many other things — Cardano wrote extensively about pain, describing the complex relationship between pain and fear, the interplay of the external and the internal senses in the perception of suffering, the therapeutic dimension of pain as a cure for anxiety, and even the epistemological potential of physical pain.

Anna Corrias did her PhD in Combined Historical Studies at the Warburg Institute, University of London. In 2015-2016 she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Seeger Centre for Hellenic Studies
at Princeton University and a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at University College, London. She has published articles on the reception of the classical tradition in the Renaissance and
is currently working on her first monograph, entitled The Plotinian Soul: The Renaissance of Plotinus in Marsilio Ficino’s commentary on the Enneads. She is also editing, together with
Guido Giglioni, the Brill Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Platonism. Both books will be published in 2016.

This paper will discuss the articulation of contrition as dolor animi in the 14th-century treatise written by Guido de Monte Rocherii. The treatise presents the orthodox view of the time on contrition and so allows us to consider the fundamental ideas communicated to priests and laity with regard to this particular emotional state. As contrition was developed in the period as the medicine for sin, this paper will reflect on the convergence of medical language and pastoral care. Among the questions that will be considered are: how does the flesh and physicality define the pain of contrition? In what ways are the medicinal components of contrition are defined? What does the metaphor of the priest as the physician contribute to this development of thinking about contrition and confession?

Naama Cohen-Hanegbi is a lecturer in the History Department of Tel Aviv University. She has published articles on the medical and religious treatment of emotions and on medicine within
inter-religious encounters, and is currently preparing a manuscript entitled Practices of Care: Medical and Pastoral Writings on the Accidents of the Soul, 1200-1500.